


Say My Name

by Fivellion



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Ancient magic, Bad Flirting, Cultists, F/M, Illustrations, Legs, M/M, Mages, Medium Burn, Overprotective Sans (Undertale), Passive-Aggressive Puns, Rampant Flirting, Recreational Drug Use, Stealing from Beetlejuice, spells
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:34:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23524711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fivellion/pseuds/Fivellion
Summary: Despite his new-found freedom, Sans was unwell, and his friends were beginning to take notice. There was just too much to explain- the resets, the night terrors, the ghost-demon-whatever-it-is that recently started haunting him… He had a lot on his plate.It would only get worse.
Relationships: Mettaton/Papyrus (Undertale), Sans (Undertale)/Original Character(s), Sans (Undertale)/Reader
Comments: 47
Kudos: 126





	1. Self-Destruct in 3... 2...

A brushing of fingertips over his face.

The smell of vanilla.

Some sounds are basically a caress. The soft clatter of dishes in a sink after a warm meal. Indecipherable radio chatter. Wind rustling leaves.

Wind on his face…

Sans’s eyes cracked open. There was sunlight spilling from the open window above his bed. The trees outside were swaying in the breeze and he realized groggily the sound had bled into his dreams. He groped around for his phone, opened it. 4:37 pm. He closed his phone and felt himself drifting off again.

The time in between wakefulness and sleep was the most pleasant. Fuzzy half-thoughts drifted through his skull like a ghostly parade. It was his first summer on the surface and it was mild, sleepy and sweet-smelling. Long, warm days lent themselves to the finest naps.

“SANS!”

The door flew open. Sans heard the doorknob slam into that dented spot on the wall and he winced, thinking of their security deposit.

“ARE YOU STILL ASLEEP?!”

“’m not not asleep.”

“I HAVE NO TIME FOR YOUR RIDDLES! AND NIETHER DO YOU!” Sans propped himself up on his elbows to watch Papyrus as he swept across the room and began rifling through Sans’s closet.

“eh, can i help you?”

“WHERE ARE ALL YOUR CLOTHES?!” Papyrus followed Sans’s gaze to a hamper in the corner. “I JUST WASHED-“ His expression went abruptly sour. “HAVE YOU BEEN NEGLECTING TO PUT AWAY YOUR CLOTHES?”

No answer.

Papyrus tripped over random detritus on his way to the hamper. He picked it up, dumped its contents onto Sans’s bed and looked Sans dead in the eye. “HOW LONG, BROTHER?”

“how…?”

“HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN ROOTING THROUGH YOUR HAMPER EVERY MORNING FOR CLEAN CLOTHES LIKE- LIKE SOME SORT OF TRUFFLE PIG?”

Sans snorted.

“THIS IS NO LAUGHING MATTER!”

“it all eventually goes back in there anyway, i’m just skippin’ some steps.”

“IT’S ALL WRINKLED, SANS! IT’S NO WONDER YOU LOOK LIKE A HOBO.”

“you’re right, paps,” Sans said solemnly. “i should _hang_ for this.”

Papyrus stiffened and dropped the shirt and clothes hanger he had been holding, looking murderous. “IN CASE YOU’VE FORGOTTEN, WE ARE DUE AT THE EMBASSY AT 6.”

“so?”

“SO?!” Papyrus took a moment to compose himself and, in the process, seemed to remember he was supposed to be practicing his ‘inside voice.’ “So, What Are You Going To Wear?”

Sans gestured vaguely at himself. “this?”

Papyrus gave him a pensive look and then gathered up several articles of clothing and marched out of the room.

Sans followed him reluctantly, casting a regretful look at his bed. He found Papyrus in the living room, ironing a button-down shirt and a pair of slacks on an ironing board Sans had had no idea they owned. The air was oddly charged. Sans watched as Papyrus ironed aggressively, noting he was wearing a cable knit sweater he always got compliments on. Sans toyed with the drawstrings of his worn hoodie idly.

“didn’t know this was a fancy thing.”

“IT’S NOT-“ Papyrus looked at the ceiling like he was praying for strength and sighed. “It’s Not _Formal_ , But It’s Not Exactly Anime Night Either. The Embassy Grand Opening Was This Morning- It Was Beautiful, By The Way, It’s Unfortunate You Missed It.”

Sans shrugged. “saw asgore’s speech online.”

“There Was A Crowd Of Thousands. The Fact That We Have Been Invited Personally-“

“why wouldn’t we be invited?”

“-By The King And Queen Themselves-“

“we saw them two days ago.”

“-To This EXCLUSIVE GET-TOGETHER-“

“you beat asgore at mario cart-“

“-LEAVES ME-“

“-and we made him drink a jar of pickle juice.”

“-HONORED BEYOND WORDS!”

They glared at each other for a moment. Papyrus’s breath had become labored with the effort of shouting over Sans. “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND. SOME DAYS ARE MARIO CART TOURNAMENT DAYS AND OTHERS ARE- ARE-“ He struggled to find the words in his agitation.

“they’re our friends, you really think they care what we look like?”

“IT WON’T JUST BE UNDYNE AND ALPHYS AND FRISK. THERE’LL BE-“ He hesitated a fraction of a second. “OTHERS. IMPORTANT MONSTERS. WE’RE BUILDING A GOVERNMENT, A NATION, FROM SCRATCH! THIS IS, YOU KNOW- MOMENTOUS! WOULD YOU JUST- JUST SHOW SOME DECORUM.” Papyrus looked down at the over-ironed shirt, scoffed, and muttered something that sounded distinctly like “for once.”

Sans’s yearning for his bed turned abruptly and painfully acute. “… kay” He got up and wandered in the direction of his room.

“Where Are You Going?”

“we don’t have to leave for like another hour, yeah? thought i’d get a power nap in. thanks fer lookin’ out, bro.” And before Papyrus could answer, Sans had already slipped into his room.

The new Embassy was a sprawling Victorian manor surrounded by farmland and countryside, about 20 minutes outside the city. Before Asgore purchased and renovated it, he had been running all official business out of his little apartment. Toriel, who was still attempting to convince everyone that she, having abdicated long ago, was no longer queen of anything, was the one who convinced Asgore to upgrade. He may feel more comfortable in his apartment but having their king broadcast official addresses from a one-bedroom studio full of houseplants was not a good look for monster-kind. With reluctance, Toriel realized she would need to take a more active role in governing for the sake of her people.

To Sans’s horror, there was someone waiting to take their coats when they walked in. And they had a _tie_ on. Hoodie-less, sans drifted in his brother’s wake, feeling utterly lost. _Where was he supposed to put his hands?_

The foyer was filled with monsters, many of them royal guards or otherwise employed by Asgore. Sans caught a glimpse of a human in the crowd, a woman maybe in her twenties. She wore a striped cardigan that had somehow escaped the attention of the monster taking people’s coats. Otherwise, he only saw monsters in the room.

“Oh shit!” Sans heard over the noise. “Don’t look now, it’s a couple of NERDS!”

“UNDYNE!” Papyrus exclaimed, hurrying over to meet her.

“Who let you in, punk?!” Undyne crowed, clapping Papyrus on the back. “I told Asgore he needed ta hire a bouncer!”

“Hello P-Papyrus, Sans!” Alphys appeared from behind Undyne with a little wave.

Sans’s hands quickly found the pockets in his slacks. “sup?”

“ISN’T THIS EXCITING?”

Undyne let out a booming laugh. “Don’t get too excited yet, you haven’t even seen the food!”

Papyrus gave a gasp of delight. “THERE’S FOOD?”

“What the hell kinda party would this be-?”

“LEAD THE WAY!” Papyrus made to follow Undyne but stopped suddenly. “OH! HOW RUDE OF ME! SANS, WE MUST FIND OUR HOSTS AND THANK THEM FOR INVITING US!”

Undyne snickered. “Later.”

“BUT-“

“Later! Trust me, they’re already swamped with enough boot-lickers, they might never get away.”

A flicker of concern passed over Papyrus’s face, but he allowed himself to be steered toward the buffet. Sans and Alphys followed a little behind. 

“I l-like your shirt,” Alphys said.

“thanks,” Sans said. “i woulda worn a camouflage one but i couldn’t find any.”

Alphys chuckled and tilted her head warmly. “So how’ve you been doing?”

“we saw each other two days ago.”

She shrugged, clasping her hands together, and quickly changed the subject. “Did you g-get a chance to see the b-broadcast of the opening ceremony?”

“i saw some clips.”

“W-what did you think of those crowds?” she asked, awe creeping into her voice. “We h-had n-no idea how many humans would show up! B-but in the end, there were more humans than m-monsters!”

“yeah,” Sans replied, indifferent. “there’s a lotta humans.”

“W-well,” Alphys scrutinized him for a moment. “Yeah, but. You know what this means.”

Sans returned her stare impassively.

“Here we were worrying about repercussions, t-taking so many s-security measures, thinking if any humans showed up, they would be protestors or… w-well.”

“what?”

Alphys opened her mouth to respond but in that moment her attention and that of everyone in the room was accosted.

He was fashionably late, naturally. He was wearing something that could burn out your retinas if you stared too long (assuming you actually had retinas). He was, somehow, already holding a flute of champagne, giving one the impression that he had brought it from home. The doorperson took his sequined trench coat, revealing a spandex suit that would be at home in a production of the musical _Cats._

Mettaton surveyed the crowd coolly, took a long drink of his champagne, did a double take at his audience and simpered, “Oh, please, don’t let me interrupt, everyone do go about your business. Pretend I’m not here.”

The foyer erupted into applause. Someone behind Sans screamed. This was the worst party.

Monsters pushed in toward Mettaton as if drawn by a magnet. He could be heard going “Oh, no. No, no, no. Please, this isn’t about me. A picture? Of course, darling! How sweet. No, _you_ are fabulous!”

Then Mettaton looked in his direction and Sans realized belatedly he was still standing next to Alphys.

“Please, everyone. Everyone!” The ruckus quieted down around Mettaton. “I am delighted to meet all of you, but do you know what delights me even more?” He allowed a pause, and everyone waited with bated breath. “Celebrating monster-kind, our freedom, and our magnanimous leaders! Tonight isn’t about me. It’s about we! Tonight, I want nothing more than to celebrate by being just another citizen, and if you would do me the honor of treating me as one of you, I will be forever grateful.”

Mettaton proceeded to part the crowd like the Red Sea as he made his way toward the buffet. “Alphys dear, it’s been too long!”

“A m-month, at least!” Alphys beamed. “You look w-wonderful.”

“Ever the flatterer.”

“Y-you remember Sans?”

Mettaton turned his glossy gaze on Sans. They had met briefly after the breaking of the barrier. Frisk had wanted Mettaton to stick around but “fame waits for no man,” as the automaton had put it. He had a whole new species full of audience members to seduce. “Of course! Enchanté.”

Sans felt his grin tug in the direction of a sneer. “same, bud.”

Mettaton’s eye slid upward until it locked onto something over Sans’s head. Sans turned and saw Papyrus frozen in place with a shrimp cocktail in a death grip between his hands. Undyne stood a little way down the buffet table, demolishing a cheese platter.

Alphys followed Mettaton’s gaze and scrambled to introduce them but Mettaton held up a single finger, sauntering past her. “Papyrus, isn’t it?” he extended a hand.

Papyrus seemed to be having trouble prying his own hands off the shrimp cocktail. “I- Yes, Well. I. Yes!” He finally got his fingers to cooperate and reciprocated the handshake.

“Alphys tells me you’re in the royal guard.”

“I. Well. On A Strictly… Healing. Type. Basis. Function. Medical. Um. Corps.”

“Fascinating. I would love to hear more about that.”

“You-?”

“I have so much admiration for your work. You must tell me everything, I won’t take no for an answer.”

The dam broke. “I AM YOUR BIGGEST FAN!” Papyrus tossed the shrimp cocktail over his shoulder and clutched Mettaton’s hand to his chest, vibrating with enthusiasm. “I HAVE ALL YOUR ALBUMNS. I KNOW EVERY LINE OF ‘NOT MY ROBOT’ BY HEART. I’VE NEVER MISSED AN EPISODE OF ‘TODAY TONIGHT.’ NEVER. NOT EVEN THE DAY I LODGED MY ARM IN THE STOVE. I MADE SANS DRAG THE TV INTO THE KITCHEN.” Papyrus cut himself off at the sound of Mettaton’s twinkling laughter.

“I had no idea I was meeting my number 1 fan. This _is_ a treat.”

“sure ya didn’t meet about twenty of ‘em a minute ago?” Mettaton barely glanced at Sans. Papyrus was still in a starstruck frenzy.

“I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING FOR YOU TO SIGN!”

“I’m sure you’ll get plenty more chances, darling.”

“I SHOULD CARRY A PEN AND PAPER EVERYWHERE! I’M SUCH A NUMSKULL! ALPHYS, DO YOU-?”

Alphys shook her head regretfully.

“shucks,” Sans sighed. “well, i’m sure we can soldier on...”

“But h-how about a selfie?” Alphys said.

“Inspired!” Mettaton clapped his hands together. “What do you say, darling?”

Papyrus made a strangled sound of delight and fumbled for his phone. As they took the picture, Mettaton leaned in and draped an arm over Papyrus’s shoulders and Papyrus looked like he may combust. Mettaton gasped when he saw the picture. “I _love_ this photo! You _must_ text it to me.” And without waiting for a response, he snatched the phone out of Papyrus’s hand. Papyrus watched, dumbfounded, until Mettaton handed it back, looking smug. “I took the liberty of sending it to myself,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Papyrus cradled the phone like it was a rare artifact. “I’m So Happy,” he said faintly.

“Oh, my darling, I’m happy to hear it, but I did ask about you.” His smile was syrupy. “Not that I can complain of the attention.”

Papyrus’s face was the color of an overripe orange. “I- I…”

“gee, i hate to interrupt,” Sans piped up. “but it looks like undyne found the fondue and is rapidly losing touch with reality.”

Everyone’s heads swiveled in Undyne’s direction just as she scooped an empty champagne flute into the vat of cheese, filled it and knocked it back like a shot. She seemed unaware or unperturbed by the growing number of onlookers.

“That is horrifying,” Mettaton muttered. “But I fail to see how it concerns us.”

But the look on Papyrus’s face made it clear he had already assumed the responsibility of saving Undyne from herself. “I- I’m Sorry, I Really Should-“

“N-no problem,” Alphys jumped in, grabbing Sans’s arm. “We’ll take c-care of it!” She made to drag Sans away, but he wouldn’t budge. He was making an alarming amount of eye contact with Mettaton.

Mettaton’s smile tightened, clearly unnerved, but he stayed put and turned his attention back to Papyrus. “Why don’t we find somewhere a little less noisy to talk?”

Papyrus cast a questioning glance at Sans and Alphys. Alphys waved him off frantically. “We’ve got it, go enjoy the party!”

Sans didn’t allow Alphys to pull him over toward Undyne until he had completely lost sight of Papyrus and Mettaton in the crowd. Right before they disappeared, he spotted Mettaton’s hand trailing up Papyrus’s arm to guide him by the elbow.

“U-Undyne!” Alphys raised her voice slightly to distract Undyne from dunking her glass into the fondue a third time.

“Yeah?”

“Er… H-how’s work?”

“Lately? Boring.” She licked some fondue off her fingers thoughtfully. “Part of me was actually hoping some of those fuckin’ nutjobs would show up this morning. Course, maybe they did, and they were just too chickenshit to do anything with so many people around.” She sniggered.

“nutjobs?” Sans said distractedly, still craning his neck to see if he could spot Papyrus.

“Oh, right,” Undyne smirked. “You’re not ‘in the know.’ Well,” She leaned in conspiratorially. “There have been rumors lately that a guild of _mages_ still exists, somewhere in the city, pretendin’ to be regular people.”

Sans’s attention snapped onto Undyne.

“B-but they’re just rumors,” Alphys interjected. “And it’s extremely unlikely. What’s much more likely is that the anti-monster protestors are spreading misinformation to intimidate us. Isn’t that a much simpler explanation than the idea that an underground network of magical humans has been hiding, all this time, completely undetected by the rest of humanity? Occam’s Razor, right?”

“Hockum’s what?” Undyne asked.

“The law of parsimony.” Alphys supplied readily. “It’s a principle that states ‘entities should not be multiplied without necessity,’ meaning-“ she stopped as she noticed Undyne’s hand creeping back towards the fondue pot. “Meaning don’t overcomplicate things.”

Undyne scoffed. “I coulda told you that one.”

Sans chuckled. “undyne’s law.”

Undyne cackled like a hyena and delivered a bruising punch to Sans’s shoulder. She studied him for a moment. “So what’s up with you punk? You doin’ ok?”

Sans frowned. Why did it feel like he had heard this question about a hundred times recently? “we just saw each other a few days ago.”

“So?” Undyne said defensively. “A friend can’t ask her much lamer friend how he’s doing?”

“just fine. same as a few days ago.”

Sans glanced around the room and he quickly spotted that human girl again. She stood out, not just because of the human thing, but she was definitely underdressed. She wandered through the crowd with an expression of utter disinterest. When Sans looked back up, Undyne’s stare was hard.

“what?”

“You know if you’re not fine, you can just say.”

“okay.”

“So?”

“so?”

Undyne scoffed. “So you fine er not?”

“just said i was.”

Undyne bristled.

“Undyne,” Alphys said anxiously. “Maybe w-we should leave it.”

“No,” Undyne barked. “No, you know what? I’m tired of this bitch walkin’ around like a zombie. Why don’t you cheer the fuck up?!”

“ _Undyne,”_ Alphys scolded.

“Why’re you mad at _me_?” Undyne cried, gesturing at Sans. “I try my best to be a good goddamn friend and all I-“

“i thought asgore only invited friends and coworkers to this thing?” Sans interrupted.

“Huh?”

“important monsters.”

“I…? What?” Undyne blinked stupidly, completely derailed. “He did.”

“so what’s that human doing here?”

Both Undyne and Alphys looked in the direction he was looking, but the human had vanished into the crowd. “What human?”

“there’s a human at this party.”

“I haven’t seen any…” Undyne’s brow furrowed. “Yer just tryin’ to change the fuckin’ subject!”

“You d-don’t mean Frisk?” Alphys asked.

Sans frowned. “no.”

“There is no fuckin’ human!” Undyne snarled. “You’re just tryin’ to squirm your way outta the conversation!”

Sans smiled and shrugged. “yeah. guess you’re right. heh. anyway, i’ll see ya.” He turned and walked off.

“Hey!” Undyne shouted behind him, but Alphys must have restrained her because she didn’t chase after him.

Sans swiped a champagne flute on his way back through the room, downed it, and left the empty glass on a random table. He did this several more times before he had made a thorough search of the foyer and realized Mettaton must have taken Papyrus into another room. Besides the massive staircase, there were two doors on either side of the foyer. It looked like one of them was blocked off, so Sans made his way over to the other door. It led to a sitting room full of plush couches and armchairs around a coffee table. On one side of the table, Asgore sat surrounded by monsters vying for his attention. By the way he was hunched over the little teacup in his hands, it was clear he had come here in a failed attempt to escape his own party.

On the other side of the table- Papyrus and Mettaton, squeezed into a loveseat that had been built for humans half their size. “-NEVER REALLY FELT THE ABSENCE. SO I GUESS YOU COULD SAY WITHOUT-“

“there ya are.”

“SANS!”

“that’s me. you don’t mind if i-?” Sans skillfully insinuated himself into to the non-space between Mettaton and Papyrus.

Mettaton shifted away with an irritated sniff. “Oh, please do.”

“what’cha talkin’ about?”

“YOU, AS A MATTER OF FACT!” Papyrus beamed down at him.

Mettaton side-eyed him. “Your brother thinks very highly of you.”

“aw, shucks,” Sans said, making himself comfortable. “you’ve always been the cool one, paps.”

“NYEH! I KNOW,” Papyrus hooted. “BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE YOU UN-COOL! JUST LESS COOL.”

“You two are simply adorable!” Mettaton cooed, regaining some of his warmth. That wouldn’t do.

“so what brings you to ebott? last i heard you were in cali, an’ i doubt you flew down just for this.”

“Oh, darling. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Sans shrugged. “just a little small-town fer you, isn’t it?”

“Well, I do have a few loose ends to tie, and much catching up, of course,” Mettaton smiled, eyes shifting back to Papyrus. “I’ll be in town for the week.”

“a whole week?” Sans arched a brow. “wow.”

“Hm?” Mettaton cocked his head. “Is that a problem?”

“nah, i’m sure ya know what you’re doin’” Sans shrugged. “you know the _nuts and bolts_ of the industry better than i do, after all.”

That tense smile again. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, dear.”

“eh, you know how fickle humans can be. one minute you’re hot, the next you’re out to pasture.”

Mettaton released a harsh laugh. “After a week? I give my fans a little more credit than that!”

“hey, i’m sure the popularity isn’t what’s important to you. in the end, it’s about the art. makin’ great art, that’s what _charges yer batteries_ , right? my counselor told me singin’ makes a great _outlet._ still, i’m sure it _hertz_ ta get left behind.”

“…If anything, I imagine a little break with will do me good. Get the creative juices flowing, you know? Some time for inspiration to strike.” Mettaton glanced at Papyrus. “Who knows? Perhaps I’ll even extend my stay.”

“OH! I THINK THAT’S A FANTASTIC IDEA!” Papyrus nodded with enthusiasm. “EVERYONE NEEDS A BREAK NOW AND THEN!”

Mettaton cast him a grateful smile and opened his mouth to say something-

“hey, you do you, bud.” Sans shrugged again. “i just don’t want anyone thinkin’ yer gettin’ _rusty.”_

A dark look passed over Mettaton’s face. “I appreciate your concern,” he said coldly. He looked up at Papyrus, hesitated, and said, “Papyrus, this has been wonderful, but I was hoping to see more of Alphys before the end of the night. I hope you understand-?”

“OMIGOSH OF COURSE!” Papyrus leapt to his feet and accepted another handshake with vigor. “NO NEED TO EXPLAIN- STARS, I TOOK UP SO MUCH OF YOUR TIME! THIS WAS JUST GREAT- I MEAN AMAZING- I MEAN, NO- SPLENDIFEROUS! WOWIE, I’M JUST SO EXCITED TO EVEN MEET YOU!”

After a moment of apparent internal struggle, Mettaton leant down and planted a brief kiss on the back of Papyrus’s hand. “Trust me, the pleasure was mine.” He spared Sans a single glance before traipsing out of the room and as quickly as the look passed, there was an unmistakable spark of _defiance_ in his eye. Sans felt his pupils blink out.

There was a long silence. Then the loveseat shifted as Papyrus collapsed into it, long limbs lax as cooked spaghetti. He stared at the ceiling for another long moment, thoroughly thunderstruck. When he finally felt Sans’s gaze, he cleared his throat and straitened up. “…Wowie,” he said. “Hot In Here, Isn’t It? I Mean Aren’t You? I’m…” He trailed off, looking at his hand. “Wowie.”

Sans relaxed into the cushions. “sorry, paps. shame he had to run off like that.”

Papyrus shook his head frantically. “OH, NO! I UNDERSTAND, HE AND ALPHYS MUST BE VERY CLOSE!”

“heh, yeah. guess he couldn’t _resistor.”_

He paused for Papyrus’s dismayed groan, which never came. “eh,” he prompted awkwardly. “get it, paps? _resistor._ ya know, like-“

Papyrus sighed. “Sans… Are You Ok?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh jeez, why is Sans so hard to write for? Why are puns so dumb and yet so tricky to think of? 
> 
> I’m thinking about adding a rough drawing to pretty much every chapter. I sort of draw as part of the writing process, so I already have a few images, but they’re unpolished. Let me know if you feel they add to the story, or if you think they’re distracting, and I’ll take that into consideration.
> 
> Drop by my writing server on Discord! https://discord.gg/TPxw6MJ


	2. ...1

“i’m dandy.”

Papyrus’s stare was penetrating.

“…why ya askin’?”

“I’ve Just…” He wavered. “I’ve Been Concerned Lately.”

“ok.”

“But I Knew You Would Just Brush It Off.”

“ok.”

“Or Get Defensive.”

Sans was sinking deeper and deeper into the loveseat, sweat beading on his forehead. He avoided Papyrus’s gaze, following instead the way his brother’s hands wrung together in his lap.

“… Perhaps We Should Talk About This When We Get Home.”

“there’s nothin’ to talk about,” said Sans.

“Don’t Think I Didn’t Notice Those Little Jabs At Mettaton, Sans,” Papyrus said, unrelenting. “I’m Not Blind. Very Rude, By The Way. But I Gave You The Benefit Of The Doubt. Because I Know You-“ He cut himself off.

“what?” Sans pushed. “you know i what?”

Papyrus took a deep breath and seemed to choose his words carefully. “I… Know You. Period. And I Love You, And I Just Want You To-“

“to show some decorum?”

“To _Be Happy,_ ” Papyrus finished.

“hm.”

Papyrus looked at him for a moment as if waiting for more, then looked away and scoffed. “It’s So Frustrating. You’re So Frustrating! I Give You So Many Opportunities To Talk To Me, And You-“

“don’t ya think if i had anything to say,” Sans said crisply, “i would?”

“So You Have Nothing To Say?” Papyrus was clearly struggling to keep his volume down. “Nothing To Say About How Rude You Were Just Now, Or How You’re Asleep More Than You’re Awake, Or How You Barely Laugh Anymore-“

Sans stood suddenly, startling Papyrus into silence. “ya wanna know what would help, paps?” He looked at Papyrus, face carefully neutral. Papyrus nodded fervently. “stop asking.”

Papyrus’s face fell and Sans couldn’t be here anymore, in this room or in this building or maybe on this planet, knowing he had put that expression on his brother’s face. He blinked and he was on the third story. There was no one around but he still needed to be outside. He stumbled through a few doors until he found himself on a balcony overlooking the countryside behind the manor. Sans doubled over in front of the guardrail, sucking in huge gulps of air that burned inside him; everything _burned._

And suddenly there were no longer scenic hills and valleys stretched before him. Just the _Void._ A yawning, starless black chasm and he was crouched at the threshold. There were so few flimsy barriers standing between him and this abyss. Sometimes they all seemed to fall away. In moments of terror, or exhaustion, or just quiet moments in the middle of the night, he thought of the gaping mouth of the Void and imagined it was here in front of him, both menacing and friendly, both a threat and an invitation.

Sans listened to his own ragged breathing, coming back down to Earth. The Void receded as he regained control of himself. He rested his forehead on the cool metal of the railing and panted, “ _fuck mettaton.”_

A soft chuckle. “Don’t tempt me.”

Sans spun around. It was the girl from downstairs, leaning against the wall with her hands buried in her striped cardigan. “the fuck are you doin’ here?”

The human’s face slackened in shock. She made a garbled noise in the back of her throat.

“eh,” Sans figured he must have scared her. “sorry, kid. rough day. didn’t know anyone was out here.”

The girl glanced around, checking over her shoulder, and looked back at Sans. “Are you talking to me?”

“… yeah?” He shifted on his feet as she advanced on him with a strange gleam in her eye.

“Can you see me?”

“can i-?” This question surprised a laugh out of him, but he quickly sobered at the look on her face. She was deadly serious. Then her expression flipped rapidly through astonishment and a frenzied sort of glee, and then she was laughing, a bubbly sound tinged with hysteria.

“You can see me!” She laughed again and stepped closer, until Sans was feeling a little crowded against the railing.

“heh,” He chuckled nervously. “i like a joke as much as the next skeleton. it’d be nice if ya clued me in.”

“Who are you?”

“…sans,” he said lamely.

“Where did you come from?”

“what?” Sans sidestepped her, putting some distance between them. “whaddya mean ‘where did i come from?’”

She just stared at him with amazement bordering on adoration, and it was the creepiest thing Sans had seen in a while.

“well, this has been great,” Sans muttered. “but I oughta get back to that party.” He turned to go.

Her smile fell. “Wait!” She reached out and grasped him by the elbow, then looked down at where she touched him with renewed delight. She brought her other hand toward his shoulder, but he broke away quickly.

“ok, what is up with you?” Sans glared. “are you just extremely high?”

The human raised her hands in surrender. “Sorry! Sorry. I’m- wow.” She raked her fingers through her wild hair. “Let’s back up. Haha. It’s been a while. Like… How talk? Much trouble! Right?” She laughed nervously but when this didn’t garner a response, she quickly shifted gears. “Look. I know this is sudden, but I need your help. I’m under a curse. I think you’re the only one who can break it.”

“oh yeah?” Out of curiosity, Sans’s gaze darted down to check her stats, but they came up blank. Well that _was_ odd. He wasn’t getting an aura either, but he usually didn’t from humans.

“I’ve basically been banished from this plane of existence.” The human leaned back against the railing. “No one can see me, hear me, touch me… except you. No idea why.”

“and you think i can help you?”

“Breaking the curse is actually pretty easy. And I would certainly owe you one.” She studied his face carefully. “… you don’t believe me.”

Sans shrugged. “can you blame me, kid?

She mulled this over, chewing on her bottom lip. “…ok. Let’s go downstairs. Guess I’ll show you what I mean.”

She walked past him toward the door leading inside, and then _through it._ Sans wrenched the door open and found her standing in the hall at the top of the stairs, waiting for him. “Can’t interact with objects, either. Shall we?”

Sans’s guard was officially up. He looked her up and down, still unable to check her. “yer a mage.”

“Not exactly. I’m not even a human, if your definition of human includes having a body. C’mon.”

She started down the stairs and Sans automatically followed. When they reached the foyer, there was still a decent number of monsters milling about, eating and chatting. The girl sneered. “Another down-side, by the way: can’t kill myself. Which is what this suck-ass party makes me wanna do.”

“Sans!” Toriel, glittering in an emerald dress, emerged from the crowd with Frisk at her heals. “I am so pleased you could make it!”

Frisk hurried forward and hugged Sans around his middle. “heya kid. hey tori.”

Toriel didn’t so much as glance at the human, who was standing right next to Sans. “I do hope you are enjoying yourself.”

“course i am,” Sans said, casting a nervous look at the girl. “place looks great.”

“Oh, thank you!” Toriel tittered. “Asgore is responsible for the landscaping, but I confess most of the interior is my doing. Oh-“ For one hopeful moment, Sans thought Toriel had finally noticed the girl standing there, until he realized she was looking _through_ the human at a server who was motioning urgently to her. “I’m so sorry, Sans, it looks like I’m needed elsewhere.” Toriel brought a paw up to her face and muttered behind it, “This hosting business is far more trouble than it is worth. Perhaps I will catch up with you later, but if not, please enjoy the party and I will see you another time.” She squeezed Sans’s shoulder affectionately and bustled off, walking directly through the human, who looked vaguely offended.

The human turned back to Sans. “I’m sure-“ She paused to watch Frisk walk through her legs, their head only coming up to her waist. “I’m sure by now you realize the tragedy of my situation.”

“…ya said you were cursed.” Sans started walking as he talked and the human kept pace with him. “by who exactly?”

“I’m sure you can guess,” she said darkly. “You already have, actually. And that’s why this is so perfect, you and me. Monsters know better than anyone to fear mages. I’ve certainly learned that lesson.”

“why?”

“Uh…” She looked at him like he was an idiot, gesturing to herself. “Because they turned me into a sad ghost?”

“no. why did they curse you?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t pretend to know the inner workings of the mind of an asshole.”

“yer sayin’ they didn’t have a reason?”

“Do you think _anyone_ deserves this?”

“not the point,” Sans replied doggedly. “why you? what made you a target?”

“Way to blame the victim,” the girl grumbled.

“if yer gonna avoid the question-“

“Ok! Jesus.” She threw her arms up, one of them going through the chest of a passing server. “What does it matter to you?”

Sans opened his mouth, but she quickly cut him off.

“I’ll tell you- it doesn’t.” Her eyes shifted away from him, her face contemplative. Then she said softly, “fuck Mettaton…”

Sans stopped walking and followed her gaze. Mettaton was in a corner talking animatedly with Alphys and Undyne.

“What’s your problem with him, anyway?” He didn’t answer. “I did say I would owe you a favor,” she mused. “So if you want him outta the picture…”

Sans gave her a hard stare that she seemed to have trouble reading.

“… or maybe you literally wanna fuck Mettaton?” She said. “In either case I could help-?”

Sans scowled and started walking again.

“Ok, clearly it was the former,” the girl said, catching up to him. “Hey, I get it, he seems like a total dick. Everyone drooling over him all the time. That stupid fucking haircut. He’s leggy, you’re not. That’s probably a bummer. Don’tcha ever wish he’d just die?”

“heh. and you can do that for me?”

“I can do much more than that,” she said smoothly. “I can do anything. I’ll be the best friend you ever had. I just need one favor.”

At this moment they reached the door on the far end of the foyer, blocked off with a polite note in Toriel’s handwriting. Sans tried the handle and found it was unlocked. He glanced around, pushed the human through the door with a hand on the small of her back, and slipped in after her. They were in an empty dining room. “and what favor is that, exactly?” Sans asked.

“I need you to say my name.” That over-bright gleam in her eyes was back, hyper-focused. “To break the curse, you need to say it three times contiguously. That is, consecutively, without interruptions.”

“you never told me your name.”

“Right…” Her smile fell a fraction. “That’s kinda the catch. I can’t just tell you. It’s part of the curse.”

“can you write it down?”

“No,” she shook her head. “But maybe you can guess it. Ever play charades?”

Sans hopped up to sit on the table. “sounds fun.”

She grinned at him and held up a finger.

“one word.”

She held up four fingers.

“four syllables?”

She nodded. One finger again.

“first syllable.”

“Mhm! Uh…” she stalled for a second. “Think of the biggest state in the US.”

“that’s not how you play charades.”

The girl shrugged impatiently. “Call me a maverick.”

Sans smirked. “alaska.”

“Shit,” she said. “The other one.”

“texas?”

“Fuck! The _other_ other one!”

“… california?”

She pointed at him and touched the end of her nose aggressively. “Second syllable! My name is Frank.”

Sans snorted. “ok?”

“What was that? That thing I just said?”

“a joke?”

“What else, though?”

“a statement? a sentence?”

“No! Listen! I’m 10 feet tall! I have 20 arms and 5 heads! I once caught a fish that was _this big!”_ She spread her arms dramatically. “I… I guard the door to hell!”

“the door to hell?” Sans said, more confused by the second.

“You know,” The human made an exasperated gesture. “That old riddle! One of the doors leads to heaven, the other to hell? One of the doormen always tells the truth, the other always tells…?”

“a lie?”

“Yes! Perfect! Third syllable-“ She made a ring shape with her thumb and fingers. Sans stared at it.

“zero?”

“Close!”

“circle?”

“Colder,” she growled. “It’s a letter.”

“’o’?”

“Yes!” She punched the air. “Last syllable! Um. I drank too much, and now I have to…?”

“puke?”

She clapped her hand to her face. “Jesus. Uh. It comes frozen, or in a can with a green giant on it.”

“papyrus does all the cookin’”

“ _Uuuugh._ ” She thought for a moment. “Two _blank_ in a pod?”

“peas.”

“Yes!!” She yelled, hopping in place. “Yes! Put ‘em together! Four syllables!”

“california, lie… cal-lie-o-pea.” He looked back at her. “calliope?”

“Perfect,” she sighed. “God, beautiful. You’re doing so good. One more time!”

“and you’ll be free?”

She flinched. “Haha… Yeah. But you gotta start over now. Because, the thing I said about it being contiguous…”

“heh, right, sure.”

“So… ready?”

“oh, right now?”

Her grin sharpened. “If you don’t mind.”

He shrugged. “sure. calliope.”

“ _Yes,”_ she whispered.

“calliope…”

“Yes…?”

“caaaan you just clarify something?”

Calliope had gone twitchy. She stuffed her trembling hands into her pockets. “Hm?”

“you can do anything.”

“Yes.”

“start wars. topple nations.” He kept his tone light. “commit genocide.”

“… I wouldn’t do any of that.”

“why not?”

“Because we’re friends!” Calliope insisted through a strained smile. “I’m not like those mages that trapped you underground. Those guys were assholes! Just like the assholes that cursed me. You understand, right? It’s you and me, Sans. Against the assholes. We could make them pay. Wouldn’t that be great?”

“but you _are_ a mage.”

Calliope struggled to mount a counterargument, floundering. “N-not anymore. Remember? I’m- I’m nothing. I’m-“

“yeah, you’re right,” Sans grinned. “that clears it up. calliope. calliope.” Calliope’s eyes snapped onto his. “caaa-kis are not my look, i don’t care what paps says.” Sans picked at his pants disdainfully.

Calliope let out groan of frustration.

“sorry, sorry,” Sans laughed unrepentantly. “i’ll stop teasin’. calliope, calliope…” A pause. “calculate this in your head for me.”

He watched her composure waver, fleeting glimpses of fury passing over her face. He leaned forward indulgently with his chin propped in his hands. “me, a monster, plus you, a mage, plus all the shady shit you’ve said in the past ten minutes. you really think that equals me doin’ you a favor?”

Her composure dropped and there was real devastation there, intermingled with cold, hard rage. “I see your point,” she said, voice brittle.

“then maybe ya should fuck off.”

Calliope sucked in a breath through her teeth. “I can fix this.”

Sans laughed. “sure ya can.”

“I get it!” She said, dragging her hands through her hair again. It was clearly a nervous habit. “You’re not big on the murder thing. I don’t _have_ to kill anyone.”

“to be more specific, i’m not big on the threats.”

“Not a threat. It wasn’t a threat!” Calliope huffed. “It was an _offer_. You’re _welcome,_ by the way. I’m sorry I’m so _generous._ I won’t do it again.” She took a moment to review what she had just said. “Shit. What I mean is-“

“i think i caught yer meaning.”

Calliope deflated slightly. “I fucked up.”

“yeah.”

“Ok…” Calliope nodded thoughtfully. “Ok. I can accept that. I got a little hasty. Somewhat overeager. Bad first impression. But that’s not me.” She looked up at Sans. “You’ll see. I can wait.”

“if i were you, kid,” Sans warned. “i’d start lookin’ for another mark.”

“I’ve already been looking for _you_ for seven years.” She leaned back against the table next to him. “Hey, maybe it’s better this way! Let’s take this slow, get to know each other. I can be awfully friendly. If memory serves, anyway.”

Sans chuckled. “i’m flattered. considering your wealth of options.”

She shrugged good-naturedly. “Maybe you’re all I need.”

“ya have terrible luck, ya know,” Sans smirked. “runnin’ inta me, of all people.”

“That’s glass-half-empty thinking,” Calliope replied. “I’d say _you_ have the great fortune of stumbling on a djinni in a bottle. I can make your wishes come true.” She winked. “Just gotta rub me the right way.”

Sans beat down the coil of heat. He was unused to the attention. “i’m not much of an optimist. feels more like i’ve found pandora’s box.”

Her smile only broadened. “Won’t know until you open it.”

“Sans! There You Are!” Papyrus stood in the doorway, looking stressed but relieved. “I’ve Been Looking Everywhere For You! I’m So Sorry I Pushed You Like That. I Didn’t Mean To Upset You.”

“paps, no.” Sans slid off the table and walked toward him. “i shouldn’t a run off. or talked to you like that. i’m sorry.”

Papyrus folded him in a fierce hug. “ALL IS FORGIVEN! I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I’M SOMEWHAT PARTIED OUT.”

“heh, same.”

“I’LL JUST GO SAY GOODBYE TO UNDYNE AND MEET YOU AT THE CAR?”

“sounds good.”

As Papyrus dashed back into the foyer, Sans turned to Calliope. “guess this is goodbye, kid.”

She blinked. “Huh?”

He was already walking for the main entrance to retrieve his hoodie. She followed. “if you think i’m letting you in the car with us, you’re crazier than i thought,” Sans murmured, looking straight ahead. “that detail about you bein’ able to touch me goes both ways, and seein’ that you don’t have any magic, well…” He met her eye as he shrugged on his hoodie. “i’m not adverse to pushin’ a ghost out of a movin’ vehicle.”

The muscles in Calliope’s jaw jumped as she ground her teeth. “It wouldn’t hurt me.”

“just sayin’ ya shouldn’t bother. save some time. ready paps?”

“YES, BROTHER!”

Calliope flinched as Papyrus walked briskly through her and out the door. Sans slouched along after him. From the passenger seat of Papyrus’s car, Sans glanced in the rear-view, half-expected to see Calliope climbing into the trunk. But she just stood in the doorway of the embassy, staring, until they drove out of sight. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter where Calliope SEVERELY misreads Sans for a good 20 min straight. Yikes.  
> Just watched the finale of Fantasy High LIVE (amazing series, check it out) and I’m very much inspired by the interactions between Aelwyn and Fabian. Quote:
> 
> “I won’t lie. I’m very deeply traumatized. And I’ve learned that deep down I’m a good person, but I’m trying to work on a lot of those ‘walls’ and things. Kind of get rid of that-“  
> “Of course”  
> “And I feel like you’re kind of- and I don’t mean this in an offensive way- but kind of fucked up in a lot of ways too and keep a lot of walls up?”  
> “I killed my dad. It’s a- like, I don’t know- yeah, of course. Of course, I’m fucked up! A heh heh…”  
> “So I feel like we could be really toxic in each other’s lives in a very exciting, sexual way.”
> 
> What a proposition, Aelwyn. 10/10
> 
> Drop by my writing server on Discord! https://discord.gg/TPxw6MJ


	3. Like The Buggane

Sans had been practicing techniques lately to increase his chances of lucid dreaming. When he was successful, he often found himself in Waterfall. He supposed, subconsciously, he was a little nostalgic for it: secluded grottos, the soft glow of echo flowers, the white noise of rushing water.

He was currently in Waterfall- sort of. It was a round chamber he had never seen before, constructed from elements of the Waterfall he remembered. There was the familiar blue florescence, lily pads and cattails, silkworms and stalactites. But the water was still and smooth as a mirror and it was deathly quiet here. He sat on the bank to take off his shoes and socks, then waded in. The water only came to his knees at its deepest. It was cool on his bones, glowing turquoise from below. Waterfall looked, felt, sounded and smelled blue. Blue upon blue upon blue. Sans stood in the middle of the chamber and stared up at the glow stones on the ceiling. _Nostalgic_ wasn’t the right word. He never wanted to come back here, not really.

The water around his legs suddenly felt warmer. He looked down and felt a cold stab of surprise. A red stain was ballooning in bright, bloody plumes around his legs, spreading slowly. The way it moved in the water was a little mesmerizing, like thick crimson smoke. Sans wasn’t exactly afraid of blood, but it didn’t bring back the best memories. He was aware he was dreaming but he didn’t have complete confidence he could control whatever came next. Sans watched the blood ooze outward in all directions for a few more moments before finally deciding to bail. He pooled his magic the way he would if he were about to shortcut and, with some satisfaction, felt the grotto and the bloody water fall into darkness as he coaxed himself awake. He was getting better at the lucid dreaming thing.

Sunlight streamed through the blinds on his window. Sans squinted up at his ceiling and sighed. 

“Mornin’!”

Sans jolted into a sitting position and threw himself backward into the headboard, his skull colliding painfully with the wood. He barely registered that he had summoned an attack, but he caught a blurry glimpse of the human narrowly ducking it.

Calliope laughed. “Missed me that much, huh?”

She looked exactly as he had seen her three days ago at the embassy; the same ripped shirt, threadbare cardigan, muddy boots, dark purplish circles under her eyes. She sat cross-legged at the foot of his bed.

“i won’t miss again,” was his knee-jerk response. Then his mind caught up with him. He hopped out of bed and walked into the living room. “paps?” he called.

“He’s out with Undyne,” Calliope said from the doorway. “For a ‘kick-ass’ Sunday morning workout, if I heard correctly.”

Undyne. Of course. “you went home with her,” Sans said. “’n waited for her to lead you here.”

“Would’ve found you eventually, regardless. Your brother works for Asgore. I didn’t know you live together, though. That made things easier. There’s oatmeal in the fridge.”

“huh?”

“Papyrus left oatmeal in the fridge for you.”

Sans stalked into the kitchen, grumbling. He pulled out a covered dish and popped it in the microwave.

“What a good big brother, taking care of you,” Calliope cooed.

“little,” Sans muttered.

“You’re older?” She clapped a hand to her cheek in mock amazement. “I have so much to learn.” Sans levitated a bag of brown sugar off the top shelf of the cabinet. “Someone must’ve stepped over you,” said Calliope.

“what?”

“My grandma used to say that stunted your growth,” she smiled. “She thought a lotta things stunted your growth, actually. And a lotta things would kill you.” Sans took his bowl out of the microwave and jabbed at the oatmeal with a spoon. “And a lotta things would get you pregnant,” Calliope added.

Sans stirred some milk and a reprehensible amount of brown sugar into his oatmeal.

“Don’t swim in a pool with a man, she always said,” Calliope rambled. “Don’t use the same toilet seat as a man without a seat cover. Don’t sit in a man’s lap.” Sans walked into the living room and curled up on the couch with his oatmeal. “Well, that last one potentially _could_ get you pregnant, but not the way she meant. She meant, like, even with clothes on.” Calliope followed him and perched on the arm of the couch. “She believed so much crazy shit. She told me once that if I see an owl outside my window, it means someone in the house will die soon.”

“your grandma sounds like a _hoot._ ”

Calliope snorted. “She was a mean old bat, actually. Except sometimes,” she amended. “Sometimes she was cool.”

“why’re you here?”

“Well I heard there was oatmeal, and I thought,” she chuckled nervously. “mmm, oatmeal… uh.”

Sans remained deadpan.

“You really have no sympathy for me at all, do you?”

“nope,” Sans answered promptly. “although i might be more inclined to help ya if you weren’t so cagey about your whole situation.”

“Meaning?”

“the way you avoid tellin’ me about your past, i can only assume the worst, kid.”

“…okay. You want the truth? Here’s the truth.” She heaved a sigh. “I hate oatmeal. It’s just goop. Ew.” Calliope watched him chew his oatmeal, her nose crinkling with displeasure. “But I would tip that entire bowl down my gullet right now if I could actually taste it. If I could taste _anything.”_ Calliope slipped off the arm of the couch and sank into the seat next to Sans. “I never thought about food this way before- before, you know. Now I think of nothing _but_ food and water and sleep and…” she trailed off, staring at the few visible vertebrae of Sans’s neck in a way that had heat rising in his face. He squashed it. “Sensation. In general.” Her eyes flicked back up to his face. “Is what I’m saying. I’m not _hungry._ Hunger would be a nice change of pace. At least it would be something. Pain would be nice, too. Until that gets boring.”

“this the part where i’m s’posed to feel sorry for ya?”

Calliope cocked her head at him. “You’re the meanest skeleton I’ve ever met.”

The front door swung open with a _bang._

“SANS!” Papyrus screeched, rocketing through the door. “SANS! SANS! GET OUT HERE!”

“yo.”

“Oh.” Papyrus looked down at his brother. “THERE YOU ARE. I NEED YOU TO-“ Sans was bringing a spoonful of oatmeal to his mouth when Papyrus smacked the spoon out of Sans’s hand.

“hey…”

“YOU’LL RUIN YOUR APPETITE!” Papyrus was carrying two bulging grocery bags under one arm and his energy was absolutely manic. He dumped them on the kitchen counter and began to whirl around the kitchen like a cyclone.

“thought i was doin’ dinner tonight?”

“PLANS HAVE CHANGED!” Papyrus slammed an enormous pot onto the stove. “I NEED YOU TO VACUUM!”

Sans eyed the ingredients Papyrus was pulling from the grocery bags. “looks like the stuff for friendship spaghetti…”

“NYEH HEH! ASTUTE AS ALWAYS, BROTHER!” Papyrus’s bravado sounded slightly forced. Sweat dripped down his angular skull. “NOW, LESS TALKING, MORE VACUUMING!”

Sans ambled over to the utility closet and dragged out a large, unwieldy vacuum. “who’s coming over, bro? that girl from work?”

“Er,” Papyrus fumbled with the tomato he was chopping, his cheeks darkening steadily. “NO. NOT THAT GIRL FROM WORK. IT’S… Er.” Papyrus put the knife down and said in a rush, “I KNOW YOU TWO DIDN’T GET ALONG SO WELL AT THE PARTY BUT I THOUGHT IF YOU GAVE IT ANOTHER SHOT…”

“huh.”

“Uh oh,” Calliope said, catching on.

“HE’S REALLY _VERY_ NICE!” Papyrus insisted, regaining some confidence. “YOU’LL SEE!”

“so, ah,” Sans began, aware of Calliope’s eyes on him. “you just happened to run into each other when you were out with undyne? is that how… this happened?”

“WELL, NO…” Papyrus busied himself tossing ingredients in the pot. “NO, HE TEXTED ME.”

Sans was reminded suddenly of the selfie Mettaton had sent to himself from Papyrus’s phone. The sneaky rust bucket. Calliope was watching this exchange with obvious intrigue.

“NOW, WE STILL HAVE ABOUT-“ Papyrus checked the clock on the stove. “SEVEN HOURS BEFORE DINNER, BUT AFTER YOU’VE VACUUMED, I HAVE A FEW MORE TASKS FOR YOU.” Sans stood next to the vacuum, wrapping his head around how completely wrong this day had gone. Papyrus paused in his chopping, hurried over and gave Sans a warm, sweaty hug. “THANK YOU SO MUCH. I REALLY APPRECIATE THIS.” He pulled back, grinning. “I PROMISE DINNER WILL BE EXCELLENT! AS ALWAYS.”

Sans cracked a genuine smile. “in that case, i guess i’d better get to it.”

When 6 o’ clock rolled around, Sans had vacuumed and dusted the living room, taken the garbage out, and cleaned the windows. Papyrus split his time between tending his sauce and obsessively straightening up.

“Every sitcom ever has an episode like this,” said Calliope, idly tracing a stain on the couch upholstery. She had been following Sans around all day like a dog on a leash. “Someone invites a dinner guest the rest of the family can’t stand. A boss they’re trying to impress or a new boyfriend.” Sans twitched, very slightly. “Hijinks ensue,” she finished.

“hate to disappoint ya, but this ain’t gonna be laugh-out-loud family fun.”

Calliope’s lips quirked. “Maybe not for you.”

Papyrus emerged from his bedroom in a pumpkin-orange turtleneck sweater and straight-leg jeans. Calliope perked up, looking Papyrus up and down. “He cleans up real nice! Hey,” she prodded Sans. “Tell your brother he looks handsome.” Sans ignored her. Papyrus ran his hands down his sweater several times, trying to smooth wrinkles that didn’t exist. There was a knock at the door.

“OMIGOD,” said Papyrus. He had taken half a step towards the door before Sans was already there. Sans heard Calliope exclaim _‘How the fuck?!’_ from behind him, indicating she hadn’t been looking his way when he teleported. Sans opened the door.

“Dar-“ Mettaton’s eyes dropped to find Sans. “-ling… How are you?”

“just perfect, shnookums.”

Mettaton chuckled weakly.

“PLEASE, COME IN!” Papyrus ushered them both toward the kitchen. “YOU’RE RIGHT ON TIME! DINNER IS READY AND I WAS JUST ABOUT TO SET THE TABLE- OMIGOSH IS THAT FOR ME?!”

“Oh, yes! Right!” Mettaton offered over a bottle of Chianti. “It’s supposed to go especially well with pasta.”

“WOWIE! THAT’S SO- YOU’RE SO-“ Papyrus cradled the bottle, looking a little overwhelmed. “THAT’S SO THOUGHTFUL! I- I HAVE NOTHING FOR YOU…”

“Oh, darling,” Mettaton waved him off, looking smug. “Think nothing of it.”

“PLEASE, TAKE A SEAT!” Papyrus rushed over to the kitchen cabinets and started taking down plates and glasses. He fished around in a drawer until he found a corkscrew and proceeded to uncork the bottle. “I CAN’T WAIT TO TRY THIS! METTATON, WOULD YOU-?” He raised a glass quizzically.

“Oh yes, please.” Mettaton settled himself in a chair at the kitchen table.

“SANS?”

Sans shrugged, not taking his eyes off Mettaton. “ _wine_ not?”

“UGH, SANS,” Papyrus groaned good-naturedly, his high mood undiminished.

When everyone had food and wine, Papyrus finally sat down across the small table from Sans.

“I love that sweater,” Mettaton purred. “That’s a fantastic color on you.”

“Nyeh Heh…” Papyrus looked down at his food. “Thank You! You Look… Actually You Always Look-“ Papyrus glanced at Sans, mumbled something indiscernible and stuffed a huge forkful of spaghetti in his mouth.

Mettaton fiddled with his hair. “How was your morning workout?”

“OH!” This was clearly more solid footing for Papyrus. “IT WENT GREAT!” And he launched into an explanation of his routine with Undyne.

A beleaguered sigh drew Sans’s attention back to Calliope. She was slumped in the remaining chair, eyeing his glass of wine with naked jealousy. “I can admit when I’m wrong,” she said. “This is not very entertaining so far. And I still haven’t figured out why you hate this guy so much. He’s nice enough to your brother…” She watched Mettaton giggle and simper as Papyrus described his and Undyne’s adventures. “… really nice.” Calliope’s expression shifted and she looked back at Sans. Sans tried to pack as much warning into his eyes as he could without attracting attention from the other side of the table. “I mean, he’s _really_ nice to your brother. Isn’t he?”

Sans was in hell.

“Your brother’s pretty nice, too,” hummed Calliope, increasingly cheerful. “Just a couple of friendly guys having a friendly conversation over friendship spaghetti. What’s wrong with that, Sans?”

Sans ground his teeth and picked at his food, unable to react.

“You ever seen Lady and the Tramp?” Calliope asked.

“SANS?”

“hm?” Sans’s attention snapped back to Papyrus, although he couldn’t quite block out the sound of Calliope humming _Bella Notte._ “heh, sorry. zoned out for a minute there.”

“We were wondering if Alphys has shared anything about her research with you?” Mettaton said.

“oh,” Sans said. “nah.”

“Hm, it must be quite the secret. She’s been awfully tight-lipped with me.” Mettaton sighed. “That is some relief, though. At least I know she’s not just shutting me out.”

Papyrus nodded sympathetically.

“I’m trying to repair our relationship,” Mettaton explained to Sans. “We grew… distant Underground. I take full blame for that. She can be so timid. And I can be…” He searched for the right word. “pushy.”

“I AM ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN EVERYTHING WILL WORK OUT,” Papyrus enthused. “YOU ARE BOTH GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE PEOPLE!”

“Ah, Papy, your conviction fills me with confidence. Oh! Speaking of Alphys…” Mettaton’s smile grew devious. “I’m dying to know: Has there been any progress on the Alphys _slash_ Undyne front while I’ve been gone?”

“I’M SORRY?”

“Has Alphys finally invited Undyne over to play with her _chemistry set?_ _Wink, wink?”_

“I BELIEVE CHEMISTRY WAS ONE OF UNDYNE’S WORST SUBJECTS,” said Papyrus, baffled by the change in subject.

Mettaton sighed. “In more ways than one. I _mean,_ my dear, are they an item?”

“ARE THEY-?”

“Are they dating?” Mettaton finally said in exasperation.

“OOOOHH!” Papyrus began to match Mettaton’s sly smile. “Ooohh… No.”

“Damn.” Mettaton frowned. “Another thing on my to-do list.”

“yer to-do list?” Sans interjected. “ya can’t make them get together.”

Mettaton wiggled his eyebrows. “You doubt my abilities.”

“I certainly don’t,” Calliope crooned.

Sans rolled his eyes.

“THIS IS SO EXCITING! I HAD NO IDEA THEY LIKED EACH OTHER!”

“Oh, you just have to learn to pick up on subtle cues, as I have,” Mettaton said smoothly. “They can be very hard to spot.”

“Oh, god, the irony,” Calliope murmured.

“WOWIE! LIKE WHAT?”

“Well, um,” Mettaton’s gaze darted to Sans. “Body language, you know? They’ll give you their full attention, they angle their body towards you, lots of laughing and eye contact, little ‘accidental’ touches…” Mettaton’s hand twitched on the table.

Calliope leaned forward. “Oh my god,” she said. “He’s going for it!”

But Mettaton seemed to think better of it, and he kept is hand firmly in place.

“What?!” Calliope reacted like her favorite linebacker just fumbled the ball. “What was that? C’mon!”

“bathroom,” Sans said, and he immediately scooted away from the table, jerking his head subtly at Calliope.

“Well I gotta see this,” she said wryly, and followed him into the tiny bathroom.

“if your new strategy,” Sans hissed, spinning around to face her. “is getting me to break your curse so i can kill you myself, it’s _working.”_

Calliope snorted. “Don’t be such a baby. They’re cute.”

“what do i have to do to get you out of this house?” Sans said, keeping his voice low. “burn sage? call a priest?”

“You already got the answer.”

“how about i blast you out of here and _keep_ blasting until yer on another continent?”

“Ha! I know your address, bitch! I’m a fucking homing pigeon!”

Sans turned to the sink and washed his hands, then splashed his face for good measure. He stood staring into mirror. Though Calliope was right over his shoulder, she didn’t appear in it. “listen to me carefully,” he said slowly, voice going deeper. “i am never going to release you.” And he marched out of the bathroom without looking at her.

“Sans.” Papyrus was standing in the entryway with his phone in his hand. “It Looks Like We’ll Have To Cut Dinner Short.”

“what’s wrong?”

“Undyne Just Texted Me To Come Down To The Embassy,” Papyrus said. “She Says It’s Urgent.”

“i’ll come with you.”

“So will I,” Mettaton added. “We can take my car.”

Papyrus looked between them, hesitating. “… Alright.”

Mettaton’s personal driver had been waiting in the parking lot and was unfazed by the sudden request to go to the embassy. He just stamped out his cigarette and opened the door for them. Sans shot Calliope a death glare when she clambered in after them, but she looked away coolly. She didn’t say a word on the drive, apparently moping about what Sans had said.

The embassy lot was nearly deserted. Undyne met them on the front steps, quirking an eyebrow at Papyrus’s company. “… We Were Having Dinner When You Texted-“ Papyrus began sheepishly.

“Whatever. Listen. We’re keeping this confidential for now. That means no blabbing,” Undyne said with a pointed look at Mettaton.

Mettaton raised his hands in surrender. “You have my word, darling.”

Undyne looked him up and down skeptically but seemed satisfied. She turned and opened the doors for them. Sans felt his soul twist. The floor and surfaces of the massive foyer were covered in a powdery grey residue. The sight was like a spear through Sans’s chest.

“It’s ash,” came a deep voice from their right. Asgore stood in a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, looking small and sad; a very much diminished image of their king. “Just ash. From burning wood, we think.”

“WHO DID THIS?” Papyrus demanded. Asgore looked helplessly from him to Undyne, who was standing in the doorway, watching the parking lot.

“We’re tryin’ to figure that out,” she growled. “But they left a clue.”

Asgore produced a round wooden token in a plastic evidence bag. The disk was a little larger than a coin and had a strange triangular symbol scorched into one side of it. Papyrus took it gingerly and inspected it. On the other side of the token was the Delta Rune- the Dreemurr family crest. 

“Ever seen a sign like that before?” Undyne asked, motioning to the first symbol.

Papyrus shook his head. Undyne grunted and turned back to the door. 

“did you take a sample of the ash?” Sans asked.

Undyne nodded. “If there’s anything weird in it, Alphys’ll be able to tell us. And she can check the disk for fingerprints.”

“Why would someone do this?” Mettaton said quietly.

“Ain’t it obvious?” Undyne’s face darkened. “It’s a threat.”

“We don’t know that.” Asgore said faintly. His gaze was distant, and he looked about a hundred years older than when Sans had last seen him.

“Sir,” Undyne said, frustrated.

“I’m only advocating that we withhold judgement until we have more information.”

Undyne huffed.

“… Would it perhaps be prudent to call the human police?” Mettaton shifted nervously.

“Oh, yeah, that’s all we need!” Undyne scoffed. “More humans.”

“Well,” Mettaton said defensively. “This _is_ breaking and entering.”

“How Did They Get In?” Papyrus asked.

“One of the second story windows was unlocked,” said Undyne. “And Alphys’s security system is fried. I don’t know what they could’ve done to it. I need to get Alphys out here to look at it, but I wanna-” She glanced around. “I wanna get this cleaned up first.”

“Did They Take Anything?”

“Not as far as we can tell.”

“And They Didn’t Leave Anything Else?”

“No.”

Sans looked back into the foyer to find Calliope walking through the room, staring around intently. She left no footsteps in the ash. He looked more closely at the floor. There were two tracks: Undyne’s boot prints and the much larger prints left by Asgore. “where did you find that disk?” he asked.

“Over there,” Undyne pointed to a spot off to one side of the room.

“weird. why not just put it in the middle of the room?” With a nod of approval from Undyne, Sans trekked through the ash, which was spread in fairly even layer an inch or so thick, over to where Calliope stood looking down at the shallow circular imprint where the disk had been discovered. “there was ash underneath it,” Sans said. “But not on top?”

“Yeah?”

“where are their prints? they spread the ash first, walked back through it to leave this thing, and covered their prints the whole way? that’s a lot of trouble ta go to.”

“Yeah? They’re loony. What do you expect?”

Sans turned around and tried using his hand to sweep the ash over his footprints but just ended up with a sooty hand and a patch of flattened ash smeared on the tile bellow. “an’ it doesn’t work so well.”

Undyne crouched down and tried to erase her own prints. “Huh. Yeah. Not as easy as it is with snow.”

“and then,” Sans frowned. “you think they left the same way they came?”

“The front door was still locked when we got here.”

“if they walked through this stuff, they woulda left it everywhere on the way out.”

Undyne’s eyes widened in comprehension. “Oh shit.” She skirted around the room, tugging her sooty boots off as she reached the stairs. “I’m gonna go take a closer look upstairs.”

“Well, well, well,” Mettaton cocked his hip. “Look at you.”

“what?”

“BROTHER, YOU KNOW I DO NOT SAY THIS LIGHTLY,” Papyrus’s eyes were sparkling. “I AM WILDLY IMPRESSED!”

Sans’s face grew warm. “heh.”

“You have a knack for this,” Asgore agreed somberly.

“you don’t say.” Sans shrugged. “just call me sherlock bones.”

This coaxed a shaky smile from Asgore, although it had the opposite affect on Papyrus. Asgore sighed. “Thank you all for coming. This is… not how I was hoping our transition to sovereignty would go. Clearly.”

“YES OF COURSE, SIR!” Papyrus said. “IF THERE’S ANYTHING WE CAN DO FOR YOU…”

“Thank you, Papyrus.” Asgore ran a massive paw over his face. “I keep hoping this is all just a misguided prank.”

Papyrus nodded reflexively. “I Suppose It Could Be…”

“I mean,” Asgore continued, a little more hopeful. “We don’t even really know if it was humans! Best not rush to judgement.”

“Right!” Papyrus agreed.

Calliope snorted. “You’ll know soon enough.”

Sans shot her a hard look.

“I’ll save you some time. This is definitely a threat. Yes, the ash is supposed to look like dust. Yes, it means they’re going to kill,” she said, crossing her arms matter-of-factly. “They even told you when they’re gonna do it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I shall haunt, like the Buggane.  
> With such weird noise, and clanking chains.  
> Hello, I'm here, I'm living in the wall.   
> I know I might be small, but I am a...  
> Freak.
> 
> \- "Eighth Wonder" by Lemon Demon
> 
> Drop by my writing server on Discord! https://discord.gg/TPxw6MJ


	4. Villainous Thing

“what the fuck do you know?”

The instant they got back to the apartment, Sans had dragged Calliope into his room and crowded her up against the door.

“Woah, Sans!” Calliope chuckled nervously. “This is going a little fast- not that I’m not up for it-” Blue magic erupted from Sans’s fingertips. “Ah ha hah… I don’t usually use magic in the bedroom-“ she said, cringing away despite herself. He reached out a tendril of magic, half-expecting to find no soul (being unable to see it), but he felt _something_ in her chest and gripped it. She shut up.

“what. the fuck. do you know?”

“I was possibly a little over-confident,” she babbled. “The thing about the time is more of a guess. And the dust thing- that’s obvious, isn’t it? Whether they can back up the threat is debatable, but the implications are clear. It’s just that no one was saying it out loud because… well. It’s like if I walked into a room full of blood. Even if it turns out it’s just ketchup, it’s still pretty fuckin’ creepy.”

“what makes you think they’re telling us when they’ll attack?” Sans pressed.

“You’re the one who said it was weird to put the token there. Why not the middle of the room, or right in the entrance, or in front of the stairs? Can you stop that please? It’s hard to think.” Sans loosened his grip. “Thanks. So, this is my point: mages love codes.”

“you think a mage did this?”

“I’m getting to that,” she said. “The floor of the foyer is tiled. It’s just a giant grid. Facing the room from the threshold, they dropped the token at coordinates (7,21). In context, I would guess that means the 21st day of the 7th month. July 21st.”

Sans released his hold on Calliope and began to pace. “that’s two days from now.”

“I guess it could mean a time of day,” Calliope mused. “7:21… But that’s both useless to you and inconvenient to prove on their end.”

“what do you mean?”

“The whole point of telling you when an attack will take place is to prove that they can make good on a threat. That they’re in control. If you say something will happen at 7:21, it better happen at exactly that time, which is difficult to pull off _and_ you would need evidence to prove it, like a video with a time stamp or something. It’s much more likely they mean a date, not a time of day.”

“what about a location?”

Calliope shrugged. “No idea.”

Sans groaned and slumped against a wall. “what’re we supposed to do? we can’t watch the entire city.” There was a heavy silence. Then Sans looked up at Calliope with renewed malice. “what were you saying about mages?”

“… That they suck?”

“it was that symbol, wasn’t it?” Sans approached her slowly. “you’ve seen it before.”

“Let me preface this by saying how much respect and admiration I have for monsters-“

“bite me.”

She frowned. “The Eye of Providence. It can mean a lot of things, depending on what surrounds it, but in this case it’s the calling card of a mage’s guild. I didn’t recognize the other one-“

“the delta rune is king asgore’s family crest.”

Calliope’s eyebrows rose. “…huh. So, what’s the plan?”

Sans already had his cell phone out and was quickly punching in Undyne’s number.

“Ok, explain it again.”

“i can’t explain any better than i have.”

“Well maybe you should try! Because I don’t get it. And if I don’t get it, I’m not gonna send guards out- I mean, where, even?”

“don’t know yet.”

“Right.”

Sans gave a growl of frustration. “i know this is comin’ outta left field, but i need ya to trust me.”

Undyne crossed her arms, nonplussed. “S’not a question of whether I trust ya…”

“More a question of whether you’re loony,” came a wheezy voice from across the room. Gerson had appeared through a doorway with a steaming cup of coffee and a newspaper folded under one arm. At Sans’s look of exasperation, he chuckled dryly.

“hey there, old man,” Sans muttered. “haven’t seen you in a while.”

Gerson carefully lowered himself into a plush armchair. “I’m something of a hermit these days. Ol’ Fluffybuns set me up with tidy lil’ retirement fund n’ I got myself a penthouse in the city.”

Undyne shrugged at Sans. “I asked him over to look at the disk-thing.”

“The thing’s here?” Calliope piped up. Sans had attempted to explain over the phone but Undyne insisted he come to her apartment when he told her he had information on the break-in. She lived in a one-bedroom only two blocks down from Sans and Papyrus’s own building.

“yeah, uh. ya mind if i check that disk out again? didn’t get a great look at it before, but i think i mighta seen that symbol somewhere.”

“You what?!” Undyne screeched, and she nearly barreled into Sans on her way past him. “Why didn’tcha say so before?!” There was a crash as she kicked open her own bedroom door like she had forgotten how to use it. She came thundering back with the disk, still in its plastic bag, and shoved it at Sans. He turned it over in his hands carefully. “Well?” She snarled impatiently. Gerson craned his long, wrinkled neck in interest.

“have you ever heard of the eye of, uh…”

“Providence,” supplied Calliope.

“providence?”

Undyne cast a bewildered glance at Gerson.

“Should we have, my boy?” Gerson asked.

“nah,” Sans shook his head. “it’s a human thing.” He unsealed the bag and reached for the disk.

“Better not,” Calliope murmured. With a covert glance at her, Sans retracted his hand and opted instead to turn the bag over and tip the disk onto the coffee table in front of Gerson.

Gerson put his hands on his knees and leaned in to have a closer look. “What do you know about this symbol?” he said.

“not much.” Sans met Calliope’s eyes over Gerson’s head. “saw it on the internet. not this exactly, but the eye…”

“The three hands reaching down,” she said. “That’s what makes it a magus emblem. The eye itself originated from Christian symbology, I think. The eye of god. And the triangle is… the trinity? I don’t know much theology. And you _have_ seen it before; you all have.” She said this as though the other two monsters could hear her. Sans’s brow furrowed quizzically. “Do you have any dollar bills?” she prompted.

Sans fished his wallet out of his pocket. There were two crumpled one-dollar bills and a five in it. He pulled out a one and immediately spotted the eye atop a pyramid, printed on the reverse side of the bill. He was kind of astonished he hadn’t made the connection, but he had never actually looked very closely at human money before.

“What is it?” Undyne said sharply.

Sans silently handed her the dollar.

“Holy shit!” Undyne dropped it like it had bitten her. “It’s a fucken conspiracy!” Gerson reached for the dollar but Undyne snatched it back up. “And what’s this shit? This writing around it? This isn’t even English- what the fuck is going on here?!”

Gerson carefully tugged the dollar out of her hands and inspected it. “ _Novus ordo seclorum.”_ He pronounced it slowly and clumsily, unfamiliar with the language, but Sans had consumed enough science texts to know a little Latin.

“new… order…” Sans faltered on the last word.

“A new order of the ages,” Calliope supplied.

“of the ages,” Sans repeated. They looked at him in mounting surprise. He shrugged. “it’s latin. ‘m sure alphys knows it better n’ i do.”

“Oh, this is fucked,” Undyne growled, massaging her forehead and pacing around the room. “This is so fucked.” She looked up at them. “We’re fucked, right? This is, like, some kind of government symbol. If the government wants us dead, then we’re just… we’re just so royally boned.”

“No…” Calliope was shaking her head while Undyne continued to rant. “No. Nope. Stop.”

“undyne,” Sans interjected. “it’s not the government.”

She rounded on him. “How do you know that?! You don’t fucken know that! We get to the surface and they make us get IDs and social security numbers and they gave Toriel so much shit about keeping Frisk- They don’t trust us, Sans! And now we’re getting sovereignty and they don’t fucking like it, because they won’t be able to control us anymore. How do you know they didn’t send people to break into the embassy and threaten our king-“

“Because they don’t have to,” Gerson said calmly, to tense silence. “The government doesn’t have to sneak around and leave cryptic messages to get rid of us.”

“Then… who?” Undyne slumped onto her piano bench.

“I’ll tell you what I’m most interested in,” Gerson said. “is gettin’ a better look at this here disk.” He reached out and Sans was about to warn him against touching it, but Gerson seemed equally as cautious. The old turtle had enveloped the disk in a ball of pale orange magic and lifted it into the air, where it rotated slowly in place. He chuckled softly. “A crude representation of the Delta Rune. Not an artist we’re after.”

Undyne grunted, still looking extremely uneasy.

Sans recounted what little Calliope had told him on the way over to Undyne’s. “we’ll do more research on the eye, but it’s been around for a few thousand years, or so. multiple groups of humans have used it to symbolize different stuff. n’ look,” he held up the dollar. “the hands aren’t on here.”

Undyne nodded vaguely.

Gerson brought both his hands up, palms facing the disk, and his milky gaze sharpened. Calliope, standing behind Gerson, leaned in to peer over his shoulder, acutely focused on the display of magic. The aura around the disk darkened into a rich sunset-orange and appeared to sink into the object. “Mmm,” Gerson murmured, “that _is_ interesting… ouch!” He jerked his hands back in surprise and the disk clattered onto the table.

“What?” Undyne leapt to her feet. “Are you ok?”

“Mahaha!” Gerson laughed throatily, rubbing at a spot on the side of his hand. “It’s got some bite, this thing! Oh, Undyne, don’t fuss! I’m fine.” He waved her off. There was a small discolored spot on his hand that looked a little like a burn. “D’you want to hear the good news first or the bad?”

“Good,” Undyne said, at the same time Sans said “bad.”

“Mahaha… This thing is magical. I can feel a thread attached to it, leadin’ off somewhere. This is the work of mages.”

“all a’ that sounded like bad news,” Sans said.

“It was all bad news,” Calliope confirmed.

“No… no, I get it!” Undyne regained a little of her characteristic enthusiasm. “With this thing, we can follow the trail straight back to ‘em, and then kick their asses! Gerson, you wily old bastard, you’ve done it again!”

Gerson burst into another bout of laughter. “I live to serve, Captain!”

“we should start right away.” Sans levitated the disk back into its baggy and sealed it.

“ _We?_ Hell, no. You’re a civilian.” Undyne snatched the bag out of Sans’s hands. “I can handle this, thanks.”

“you need as many monsters working on this as possible,” Sans asserted. “we have less than two days-“

“Yeah, uh…” Undyne scratched her neck awkwardly. “About that. It’s not that I don’t believe you-“

Sans stiffened. “ya don’t.”

Undyne flushed an angry violet. “Well, how is this even useful information? Like I wasn’t already doing everything I can!”

“here’s some useful advice: stop being stubborn and _let me help you.”_

“Ya know what Sans?! I dunno if you got a swelled head from playin’ detective for _one day,”_ Undyne sneered. “but you can give the conspiracy theories a rest.”

Sans scoffed. “you’re the one who thought the fuckin’ _FBI_ was after us.”

Undyne bristled and bared her neat, uniform rows of sharp teeth. “You need to back off n’ let me do my job.”

“sure i will,” Sans snapped. “just do it right.”

“Get out.”

“what?”

“Get the fuck out!” Undyne made a motion to grapple Sans and drag him bodily out the door, but he evaded her and headed that way himself.

“great. cool. fine. perfect.” He wrenched the door open, stepped out, and turned back to Undyne. “don’t know exactly what i expected-” And she slammed the door in his face.

Sans stood outside Undyne’s door, breathing heavily. Calliope emerged through the wall next to him. “Could’ve gone better.”

Sans turned and began to trudge down the hall.

“We probably shouldn’t leave her alone with that thing,” Calliope called after him. He looked back at her. “It’s a tracker token,” she said. “That means it has a twin somewhere, and they’re always attracted to each other. They’re made to help the user relocate the other token. I was starting to suspect… but the turtle confirmed it.”

Sans felt a wave of dread wash over him. “it works both ways, then.”

“It works both ways,” Calliope answered, just as Undyne’s door opened once more. 

“Who ya talkin’ to out here, eh?” croaked Gerson, shuffling out into the hall and shutting the door behind him.

Sans hesitated, then settled on shrugging despondently in answer. Something (or perhaps a lot of things) about Gerson made Sans feel like a teenager again. Not in a pleasant way. Smiling ruefully, Gerson approached Sans to lay a weathered hand on his shoulder, steering him gently, and they began to walk side by side down the hall. Sans made himself slow down to keep pace with the old monster, although his soul was screaming at him to _act,_ possibly to march back there, break down Undyne’s door, and knock some sense into her.

“I wouldn’t take it personal, my boy,” Gerson began. “Undyne is determined to put as few monsters in harm’s way as she can. If she thought it were possible, she would fire the rest o’ the guard and do it all alone.”

Sans scowled at his feet.

“Stubborn,” Gerson chuckled. “You’re not wrong. And I’m sure you can recognize a hard head when you see one.” He knocked a knuckle against Sans’s temple affectionately.

Sans tried to look offended. “ya sayin’ i need to come outta my _shell?_ well, look who’s talkin’.”

Gerson laid a dignified hand on his chest. “I’m surprised at you, Sans. I have a tough torso, true. But, if anything, my head has always been much too soft.”

“heh.” Sans’s mood lightened despite himself. They reached the end of the hall where an open-air stairway led down to the narrow parking lot outside Undyne’s apartment complex.

Gerson turned a wistful look at the cloudless night sky. “You have more in common than you think.”

“me n’ undyne?” Sans asked skeptically.

“You had to grow up faster than her, Sans.” This made Sans shift uncomfortably, glancing back at Calliope. “But you were both good kids; both impetuous, both headstrong, both eager to impress…”

“no offense,” Sans said, “but i mostly remember her being an obnoxious little shit.”

“Mahaha! You may feel differently if you were closer to Undyne’s age, like Papyrus. I’m just sayin’, try not to _judge_ her too harshly.” He winked.

Sans huffed. He had, in fact, been thinking of Papyrus. When the two of them were grade school-age kids, Undyne had bullied Papyrus mercilessly for a window of three or four years, until she finally worked out her shit and calmed down. Sans had spent the majority of that time wishing he could strangle her. “if you say so, old-timer.”

Gerson stared at the stars for another long moment, deep in thought. “It’s been a privilege,” he said suddenly, turning to Sans. “Watching all of you grow up.”

Sans didn’t know what to say to that.

“Soon enough, things may get pretty bad ‘round here,” Gerson said. “But our kind have survived the wrath o’ mages before. ‘N back in those days, they didn’t slink around in the shadows. They walked in the daylight in full regalia, proud as peacocks. Shows how their power has diminished in the time we been gone. This way’s more fitting, o’ course. Matches what they really are: snakes, my boy. Snakes in the grass.” Gerson gave Sans’s shoulder a squeeze, turned and hobbled down the steps and into the parking lot.

“… how old is he?” Calliope said faintly. Sans didn’t miss how pale her face had gone. He ignored the question.

If Undyne refused to listen, he would go over her head.

Sans took out his phone, scrolled through his contacts, and stood there a moment, his thumb hovering over Asgore’s name. Asgore would take him more seriously than Undyne did. Asgore would listen. And if he didn’t…

Sans flipped his phone shut, growling low under his breath.

He turned his gaze to the parking lot. Gerson was peeling away in his little green compact car, past the reach of the floodlights and into the night, toward the heart of the city. Just past the edges of those pools of light was pitch blackness. Wherever the other token was, whoever held it, they could find its mate. They could be here now, watching from the shadows.

Without giving himself a chance to reconsider, Sans stepped through the void into Undyne’s bedroom, finding it mercifully empty. He quickly located the token, grabbed it, and teleported back outside.

“Holy fucking shit!” Calliope squealed in what Sans would have taken for fear if not for the elation on her face.

Sans hurried down the stairs, motioning for Calliope to follow. He located Papyrus’s car in the parking lot and waited until they were safely inside before turning to her and showing her the token. “do ya know how to use this?”

She suppressed a grin at the sight of the token. “You just toss it into the air, like you’re flipping a coin. It’ll fall in the direction of its mate. You can teleport,” she added, watching him closely.

Sans was busy figuring out how to flip the token without touching it. He finally decided to dump it out on the dashboard and stuff his hand in the empty bag, using it as a makeshift glove. “how d’you know that’s not a normal monster thing?” he said, carefully picking the token up and flipping it into the air.

Calliope snorted. “It’s certainly not a normal mage thing.”

The tracker token behaved normally on the trip upward, but as it reached its apex and began to fall, its gravity seemed to shift, and it veered off into the door to San’s left and stuck there for a moment before sliding to the floor of the car. 

Sans jammed the key into the ignition and started the engine.

“So we’re really doing this?” Calliope asked as Sans pulled out of the parking lot in the direction the token had indicated.

“i’m gonna find these fuckers.”

Calliope stopped trying to mask her delight.

The token directed them deeper and deeper into the city. They passed through an industrial complex; factories and warehouses clustered around a section of the river. The traffic got heavier as they neared downtown Ebbot. Sans gave the token a toss every time they were stopped at an intersection. Even as late as it was, the commercial district was bustling. Hotels, theaters, restaurants, and boutiques were open at nearly all hours. The traffic slowed to a frustrating crawl as they passed through, stopping at every corner for flocks of human pedestrians.

Calliope draped herself over the dashboard cover, staring out the windshield. “I love cities,” she sighed.

Sans couldn’t agree less.

Finally, they had moved past the worst of the downtown area and the traffic lifted. They were in a seedy neighborhood now, the road flanked largely by run-down apartment buildings. It was darker- not only due to the absence of glowing storefronts and neon signs, but roughly a third of the streetlights were busted. Sans stopped at an intersection and tossed the token, then jumped as it flew back at him and plastered itself against his chest. He pried it off and exchanged a look with Calliope. They must have passed their destination, but he had just tested it at the last stop sign, meaning the other token was somewhere on this block. He took a left and drove slow, circling the block and tossing the token one-handed as he went. After two full circuits around the handful of buildings, he narrowed it down to a single apartment building on the corner. Sans backed into an alleyway across the street, parked the car, and turned off his headlights. They sat in silence for a moment, Sans staring straight ahead at the apartment building, Calliope staring expectantly at Sans, until it clicked in her head what he was up to.

“A stakeout,” she whispered reverently. “Well, hot damn.”

Sans didn’t answer, and the car fell back into silence. Sans glanced at his phone. It was nearing 3 AM. He flipped the token again. It still pointed directly at the building on the corner. He rested his elbows on the steering wheel and waited.

“You didn’t tell them about me.” Calliope broke the silence again.

“do ya need ta talk?” Sans muttered. “like, absolutely need to?”

“They might’ve believed you.”

He scoffed.

“What’ll happen?” she went on, “When she realizes what you did?”

“she’ll be pissed,” Sans grunted. “obviously.”

“Obviously.”

They watched a middle-aged man emerge from the apartment building and walk down the street, tapping on his phone. Sans flipped the token but it stayed the course. He snapped a picture of the man with his phone just in case.

“If you’re afraid they’ll think you’re crazy, there’s an obvious solution.”

“’m not breakin’ yer curse,” Sans muttered. “or whatever it is.”

“I don’t know why you’re worried about them not believing you, anyway. Monsters already believe in magic. Anything’s possible.”

“not anything,” Sans said. “definitely not anything.”

“Agree to disagree.”

“there’ll always be somethin’ ya just can’t do.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“stop me if i’m wrong, kid-”

“You are, but go on.”

“if ya could do anything,” Sans said, “i would think ya’d un-banish your own incorporeal ass.”

There was a smug silence.

“… rude.” Calliope propped her boots on the dash. “Hey, I’ve got a question.”

“nah.”

“I do though,” she plowed on. “You ever thought maybe you _are_ crazy?”

“every day.”

“I mean especially recently. You might argue that hallucinating an entire person is an advanced kind of crazy.”

That mean little worm of paranoia reared its head again. He shrugged. “why worry? so what if yer not real? so what if none of it is real?”

She wrinkled her nose. “None of what?”

“this.” He waved his hand vaguely. “all o’ this could be a simulation. someone’s dream. a child’s bedtime story.”

Calliope laughed. “Not a child, I hope! This story is rated PG-13 at least. Possibly R in later chapters.”

“maybe i’m not real,” Sans insisted. “maybe you’re in a coma.”

“Well that’d be _real_ disappointing.”

“pff. weak.”

“What?”

“weak pun game.”

Calliope’s smile was baffled. “I-?”

“ _coma_ on, it’s not that hard.”

A peel of startled laughter burst from Calliope’s throat. “ _Excuse me?_ ” she wheezed. “ _Come again?”_

“ _coma_ again,” Sans tsked. “i literally just handed you that one.”

“I’m not going to ‘up my pun game,’” Calliope sniggered. “I like having friends. Er… Liked… Will like? The point is, no one likes puns. Much less puns about tragic medical conditions.”

“speak for yourself,” said Sans. “i think they’re _stupor._ ”

“You _are_ crazy. I’m not laughing because that was funny, I’m laughing because I’m devastated. My fate is tied to your clearly questionable judgement.”

“yeah, yeah.” Sans yawned. “i’m sure that’s it.”

“So you’re really not concerned I might be your imaginary friend?”

“friend is a stretch.”

Calliope pouted. “Boo. And I thought we were bonding.”

A few hours went by. Calliope was apparently intrigued by the suggestion that they were all living in a simulation.

“I guess it doesn’t matter.”

“course it matters.”

“Why?”

Sans took a moment to structure his response. “life is meaningless unless our actions have consequences.”

“But if we’re all in the same simulation- if there are other people, or even just one other person- then my actions do matter. They affect other people.”

“and if there’s no one else? say everyone else is just a convincing illusion, not a person with an inner life.”

She was quiet for a minute. “Then I should still behave as if they’re real people,” she said, “because I have no way of knowing either way.”

Eventually the conversation died down and Sans found himself fighting to keep his eyes open. His vision began to swim in front of him.

“I can keep watch, ya know,” Calliope said at length. “I don’t sleep, anyway.”

Sans shook his head stubbornly.

“You gotta be well-rested if you wanna catch some perps.”

Sans tried to stay alert for another twenty minutes and it was only after he caught himself nodding off that he sighed. “wake me in an hour.”

Calliope laughed softly. “This is crazy, you know that? Bonkers.”

As he drifted off, Sans dimly registered a quiet murmur from Calliope’s direction. “ _Bone-_ kers,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. So. It's been a while. I'm thinking about starting a discord for writers. Let me explain:  
> I was at my most creative and my most productive, writing-wise, when I was in my old school's creative writing club. We would get together every week and chat, share our work, offer feedback and constructive criticism, sometimes hold formal workshops and do writing exercises. It was fun and got the creative juices flowing. I was president for a year, vice president the next year. It was really nice to spend time with other writers and get some inspiration.  
> If you're interested or know someone who's interested, let me know.  
> Peace XOXO
> 
> EDIT: I made one. Drop by my writing server on Discord! https://discord.gg/TPxw6MJ


	5. Blood in the Water

Sans woke with a jolt, causing Calliope to jump in her seat.

The sun was up. Sans scowled at Calliope. “i told ya ta-“

“No one else has come out,” she said, watching Sans snatch the token off the dash and flip it into the air. It still pointed directly at the apartment building on the corner. 

There was a muffled _ping._ Sans twisted around in his seat until he found his phone underneath him and opened it. It was 8:04 AM. He cringed when he saw that he had 2 text notifications. He opened his texts. The most recent unread thread was from Papyrus at 6:15 that morning.

_-SANS! WHERE ARE YOU?_

_-UNDYNE CALLED ME THIS MORNING IN A VERY YELLY MOOD. SHE SAYS THE THINGY FROM THE BREAK-IN YESTERDAY HAS GONE MISSING AND SHE WAS IMPLYING SOME THINGS… MORE LIKE ACCUSING ACTUALLY. I TOLD HER YOU ARE NOT A CRIMINAL AND YOU WOULD NEVER IMPEDE AN INVESTIGATION FOR ANY REASON._

_-NOT EVEN AS A ‘PRANK’_

_-OR ANY OTHER FORM OF JAPE OR TOMFOOLERY_

_-BECAUSE YOU KNOW THAT IS NOT FUNNY._

The last text was from a minute ago: - _SANS YOU ARE MY BROTHER AND I LOVE YOU. YOU ARE NOT IN TROUBLE. I’M SURE IF YOU BRING THE DISK THING BACK AND APOLOGIZE, UNDYNE WILL UNDERSTAND._

Sans opened the next new string of texts. They were from Undyne, starting at 5:42 AM.

_-sans answer ur phone_

_-SANS_

_-SNAS_

_-ANSWER YOUR PHONE_

_-SANS U LITLE SHIT WEASEL I KNOW WUT U DID WHEN I GET MY HANDS ONE U UR FUCKIN DEAD DO U UNDRSTAND ME?!???!? ANSER UR FCKKIN PHONE_

Sans quickly closed his phone and pocketed it.

“You good?”

“grand.”

Calliope regarded him for a moment. “Fish lady knows you took the thing.”

“she’ll thank me later.”

“Hm. Oh! Someone’s coming out.”

There was a young man leaving the apartment building, hands in the pockets of a worn sweatshirt. Sans flipped the token and he felt a surge of nervous energy as it redirected toward the stranger.

“Ooooh, shit!” Calliope said, much too cheerful. “It’s on! Are you gonna jump him? Show me your moves?”

Sans waited for him to get a little farther down the street before turning the engine on and carefully pulling out of the alleyway. He needed to tail him until he was somewhere more secluded. Somewhere they could have a chat.

The guy walked down the street a little way, turned left, left again. Sans made an anxious loop around the block, unable to drive slow enough to keep his pace without aggravating traffic and drawing attention. When he came back around to the intersection where they had last seen him, the stranger seemed to have disappeared. Sans swore under his breath and hastily parked along the curb, grabbing for the token again-

“There he is!” Calliope pointed across the street.

All Sans saw at first was a café sandwiched between a bagel place and a lawyer’s office. Then he spotted the back of the stranger’s head through the café window. He was standing in line at the register. He handed the cashier his card and waited while she retrieved a muffin from the glass display case. The barista busied herself behind the counter with his order.

Sans took the opportunity to check him:

*** Bailey ATK 12 DEF 5**

*** LV 2 HP 20/20**

*** He’s tired of taking nightshifts but too intimidated by his boss to refuse.**

“That’s the biggest muffin I’ve ever seen…” Calliope muttered. “Is that, like, the trend now? Gigantic muffins? Look at her! She has to hold it with two hands! That muffin is _too big.”_

Sans was already getting out of the car. He locked it and barely paused to check for traffic before marching across the street and into the café. He bought a black coffee and chose a table in the corner of the room, where he sat resolutely, facing the stranger, whose name was apparently Bailey.

The café itself was aggressively pink. There were pink walls, pink chairs, pink polka-dot table clothes and a neon sign in the shape of a flamingo just outside the door. Bailey sat at a table next to the window, sipping a latte from a mug with little kittens on it, his other hand messing with his phone. It was bizarre, almost comical; the juxtaposition of this sleazy loser sitting in a kitschy café with his flavored coffee and his (admittedly enormous) muffin. This guy was weak- extremely weak. Not exactly the berserker Sans had been picturing; not a high-level mage hopped up on the stolen power of his victims. Not a soul-eater. Not a demon. But he was still a threat.

“A muffin is a snack,” Calliope said, breaking Sans from his thoughts. “A muffin is not a full meal. I’m disgusted.” She sat at his table on the little pink chair with her legs crossed. “How’s the coffee?” she asked.

“oh.” Sans took a hesitant sip. “it sucks.”

She laughed.

He shrugged. “i don’t much like coffee at the best of times.”

“People who don’t like coffee,” Calliope reasoned, “usually get something creamy and sugary, with a long name like… chocolate chip peppermint mocha frap. Or a vanilla-cream chai latte. With a shot.” She winked. “That way it’s still coffee.”

As time passed, Sans could feel his already brittle patience threatening to snap. It was almost noon and his guy seemed content to sit in a café all day. Although he never even glanced Sans’s way and only occasionally looked up from his phone to take a bite of his muffin, Sans began to grow nervous that this was some sort of distraction. A red herring.

“do me a favor.”

“Hmmm?” Sans ignored Calliope’s slow, self-satisfied smile.

“walk over there and see what he’s typing into his phone.”

He expected some kind of demand or argument for reciprocation- chiefly on the subject of her curse- but she hopped to her feet and practically skipped over to where Bailey sat. Sans watched, nursing his shitty coffee, as Calliope leaned over Bailey’s shoulder and stood there for a few minutes. Finally, she pranced back over to him and took her seat.

“He’s arguing with a stranger online about Viagra being government-funded.”

“i- he- what?”

“Viagra? It’s a medication for people who can’t get-“

“i know what viagra is.” Sans massaged the bone between his eye sockets. “i was hoping he was texting his boss or something.”

She smirked. “Wouldn’t that be convenient?”

“try again.” Sans gestured over to Bailey’s table.

Calliope shrugged, walked over and was only looking over his shoulder for less than a minute before returning this time. “Now he’s playing Pokemon Go.”

“what?”

“I know. Who plays Pokemon Go anymore?”

“what is that?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him, then her expression shifted with dawning comprehension. “Right. You were underground when that craze struck,” she said, nodding to herself. “I was still- you know, an accursed specter- but I could watch people, and really that was _all_ I did. Yeah, a few years ago that was the big thing. Everyone was walking around catching pokemon on their phones.”

Sans looked at her blankly.

“It’s a game,” she said. “It’s just a game.”

“he’s just- just sitting there,” Sans spluttered, struggling to keep his voice low. “playing a _game?”_

“Well, this café is a Pokestop, so…”

Just then, a ringtone drew their attention back across the room. Bailey dropped his phone on the table in surprise, then hurriedly picked it up, fumbling with the touchscreen. “’Lo?” he said through a mouthful of muffin. “Yeah? No, I-“ He swallowed. “I’m sorry. Jeez, I’m so sorry, I’ve- I’ve just had a lot goin’ on an’ I- yeah, no. I know. I’ll, uh. I’ll be right there. I- no I swear, I… It won’t.” He hung up and sat there for a second, scrubbing at his face and muttering something under his breath. Then he jumped up from his chair, grabbed his muffin, and took off down the street at a sprint.

Sans leapt out of his own chair and booked it back to the car. Bailey appeared to be running back in the direction of his apartment, and sure enough, that’s where the token led them. Sans and Calliope were only parked outside for a few minutes before Bailey emerged again, this time wearing a threadbare backpack and dragging an anemic little moped with him through the door. When he took off on the moped, Sans was not far behind. He kept some distance, although Bailey seemed to be in too much of a hurry to notice he was being followed.

Bailey led them out of his neighborhood and down the street that ran parallel to the river, through the business district, back toward the industrial side of the city. Before they reached the warehouses, however, he turned into a large, mostly empty parking lot. He hastily parked his moped and went running toward a little booth that Sans realized was a ticket kiosk. His eyes travelled upward to the looming Ferris wheel. They were at Ebott Fairground.

An older man met Bailey before he reached the kiosk. He was gesticulating aggressively and looked like he might hit him. Bailey shrank away and avoided eye contact. Sans checked the older man:

*** Mr. Longston ATK 2 DEF 4**

*** LV 1 HP 8/10**

*** Refuses to go to a doctor for his sciatica.**

When Mr. Longston finally let Bailey past, Bailey went into the public men’s room and emerged wearing what appeared to be his work uniform- a striped shirt with brightly colored suspenders and a nametag. Sans and Calliope watched from the parking lot as Bailey wrestled awkwardly with a large push broom, clearing litter from the entryway to the fairground.

“… do you think it’s possible,” Sans said slowly, “that this kid isn’t involved? that maybe someone gave him the token thing ta carry around but he doesn’t even know what he has?”

“Why do you say that?”

Sans cast Calliope and incredulous look. “look at him.”

Calliope was looking. “Not what you expected?”

Sans didn’t answer.

“He’s probably an apprentice,” she said. “Definitely vulnerable. It’s good news for you. I don’t think they would have put him in charge of the token if they knew any monsters had figured out how to track it down.”

“or they know i have and they gave it to someone expendable so i’ll waste my goddamn time followin’ him around.”

Calliope shrugged.

“that all ya got to say?”

“You have a point.”

Sans narrowed his eyes at her. “he’s got a pretty distinct accent, huh?”

“He does?”

“sounds like you.”

“Oh?”

“southern.”

Calliope laughed. “Lots of people have southern accents.”

Sans’s frown deepened. “i’m not great with accents. but you two sound _really_ similar...”

Calliope rolled her eyes. “We must be cousins, then. Oh, right! He grew up down the street from me. Duh! How could I forget?”

“kid, i’m not sayin’ ya know him,” Sans snapped. “i’m sayin’ ya prolly know what area he’s from. and by the way, you’ve been real forthcomin’ with information _when it suits you._ then as soon as something crops up that might put you in a bad light, ya clam up. how am i supposed to trust anything you say?”

Calliope frowned at this. “It’s an Appalachian accent. Tennessee, Virginia, the Carolinas. That region. And it’s not that strong- you should hear old-timers talk.”

Sans nodded thoughtfully.

“Can’t imagine that helps you much.”

“anything helps,” Sans muttered. “any info ya can give me. it helps.”

They watched Bailey lug some trash bags across the parking lot to the dumpsters. “… that region is Cypher territory,” Calliope said, looking uncomfortable but resolute. “Which tracks, because that symbol,” She jerked her head toward the token. “the one with the eye. That’s Cypher’s insignia. Just so you know.”

Sans blinked at her. “cypher… is a mage’s guild?”

Calliope nodded.

“what can ya tell me about ‘em?”

“Not much. I knew some active members in Virginia, but they’re very secretive. They keep to themselves. I think the only reason they would be out here is because _you_ are. Monsters, I mean.”

“what the fuck is their problem with monsters, anyway?”

“That’s…” Calliope’s brow furrowed. “a complicated question.”

Sans huffed. “it’s really not.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

Sans stared at her for a moment. “you gonna tell me _how_ you’re connected with cypher?” A beat of silence. Sans could see Calliope clenching her jaw. “right.” He got out of the car and started across the parking lot. He passed close by Bailey’s moped on the way, and with a flick of his wrist, speared the tires with a couple of bone projectiles. The air rushed out with a satisfying _hiss._

Bailey had taken over at the ticket booth. He looked up from the register as Sans approached and there was a quick but palpable series of emotions that passed over his face: _surprise, fear, suspicion._ His eyes darted down to where Sans’s hands were hidden in the pockets of his hoodie. Humans found this intimidating. Not for any logical reason; it wasn’t as if Sans carried (or needed) a weapon.

“hey there, pal,” Sans said pleasantly, stopping in front of the booth.

“… mornin,” Bailey said, although it was after noon.

Sans’s eyes passed casually over his nametag. It said ‘Eric.’ Maybe Bailey was his last name? “so, help me out, here,” Sans said. “what’s the difference between a ticket an’ a wristband?”

“Rides cost tickets every time you get on,” Bailey said stiffly. “Wristband’ll get you in for the whole day, without tickets.”

“how ‘bout the difference between a raven an’ a writing desk?”

Bailey’s face scrunched up in confusion.

“heheh, i’m just kiddin’ bud. sounds like a deal,” Sans said, pulling out his wallet. “do dem bands come in fancy colors?”

“We got red. They come in red.”

Sans sucked air in through his teeth. “red clashes with my aesthetic. i’ll just take a ticket.”

“I… we don’t sell single tickets,” Bailey said. “They come in units of five.”

“ah, jeez, ya drive a hard bargain there, bud. tell ya what, i can swing for three.”

“Dude, this isn’t my- I don’t make these decisions-“

“i respect the hustle.” Sans winked.

_“This isn’t a-“_

“i can do four.”

“I can _sell_ you _five_ ,” Bailey ground out through clenched teeth.

“really twistin’ my ulna, eh?” Bailey looked murderous. “arright, ya wore me down. i’ll take a wristband.”

“Wha-? Fine. Whatever.”

Sans paid for the wristband and had to put his hand through the slot in the window for Bailey to put it on his wrist. He watched Bailey grimace and take special care not to touch him. “thanks, bud.”

As Sans shuffled over to the turnstile, he caught the faint murmuring of “ _fucking freak.”_

“what was that, bud?”

Bailey jumped. “I said, have a nice day!”

“heh. it is a nice day, isn’t it?”

Bailey glanced up at the gathering rainclouds. “… yes.”

Sans wandered around the fairgrounds for hours, keeping an eye socket on the ticket booth. Humans filtered in and out. Calliope was notably absent. The fairgrounds were popular during the summer, but almost exclusively at night, and it was easy to see why: In the daylight, it was difficult to ignore how rundown and grimy the place was. Bailey looked bored and miserable, slumped against the counter in his little box, waiting for customers. He clearly hated the job. Being a mage’s apprentice obviously didn’t pay much. If Calliope was right about his position, that is. If Calliope had been telling the truth about literally anything. When a strong pang of hunger broke through his muddled thoughts, Sans finally remembered how long it had been since he had eaten. He bought a funnel cake at a stand and sat at a bench where he had a clear view of the ticket booth.

“Oh my god.” Calliope was back. She had returned in time to watch Sans empty a fistful of ketchup packets onto his funnel cake. “What the fuck even-?”

“where’ve you been?”

“Snooping around,” she said. “Please don’t eat that.”

Sans maintained eye contact while he took a slow, deliberate bite, then licked a streak of ketchup off his teeth. Calliope shivered (not, Sans suspected, entirely out of disgust).

“find anything?” he asked.

“Uh. Nah… I’ve been thinking about what you said, that this guy might not be a mage at all, and I guess that could be true. But like I said, they’re very secretive. It can be tricky to tell. I did find out why that old guy was yelling at him, though. His shift was supposed to start at 10. He was almost two hours late when his boss called. And it ends at 6 which, if I’m not mistaken, is coming up pretty soon here.”

Sans glanced at his phone, cringing at the sight of the text alerts he’d been ignoring. It was 5:52.

“think i’d better use this cute little bracelet at least once.” Sans stuffed the remainder of the funnel cake in his mouth, tossed the paper tray, and walked over to the Ferris wheel, where there was no line. As he stepped into the gondola, he could see Bailey carrying his pack into the men’s room to change into his street clothes. With a searching look in Sans’s direction, Calliope settled into the small space next to him.

The Ferris wheel started turning. At the apex of its rotation, Sans could see the river twisting away into the countryside, the rundown textile factories, the traffic spiderwebbing out from the shopping district, the sun hanging low over the cityscape, purple clouds crowding in around it.

“Uh, what’s he-?” Calliope was staring down into the parking lot where Bailey had knelt down to inspect his moped. He then stood up and kicked it. It fell on its side and he kept kicking it over and over. They couldn’t hear him, but Sans imagined a stream of vulgarities issuing from his mouth. Calliope looked back at Sans. “You didn’t…?”

Sans raised his brows innocently. “what?”

“You’re a full-blown criminal!” Calliope snickered. “You- haha! You don’t even know for sure if he’s…”

“eh.” Sans shrugged. “fuck ‘im.”

Calliope laughed with open delight. “Yeah. Fuck him.”

The Ferris wheel made another rotation. Bailey’s tiny figure finished its temper tantrum and was now walking the moped out of the parking lot and down the sidewalk, toward his apartment. Another rotation. He disappeared behind a building and reappeared in a deserted side street. Perfect.

Sans stepped into the void. In another step, he was a few paces behind Bailey. The side street was bathed in the long shadows of evening. There was a defeated slump to Bailey’s shoulders.

“well, hey there, bud,” Sans said levelly. “what a coincidence seein’ you here.”

Bailey stiffened and slowly turned. “Y- It’s… you, from- from the…”

Sans extended a boney hand. “sans. sans the skeleton.” Bailey stared at his hand with an expression of intense distrust. “ya gonna leave me hanging?” When Bailey didn’t answer, Sans raised his palms in defeat. “hey, suit yerself, bud. no skin off my bones.”

“What do you want?” His voice was hard but that ragged edge was all fear.

“i could actually use some help, if yer offerin’. See, i don’t know if ya noticed, but i’m a monster.”

Bailey snorted. His grip on his moped tightened.

“well, yesterday someone left somethin’ in our embassy. an’ i been tryna find the owner, so i can return it to ‘em.”

Sans watched Bailey’s face fall and his reservations about this kid possibly being innocent vanished. Bailey recovered quickly. “I dunno what you’re talking about. If you don’t leave me alone, I’m calling the police.”

“so ya don’t want it back.”

“I told you, I-“ Bailey’s eyes went wide and he goggled at Sans for a moment. “ _You_ slashed my _fucking_ tires! Didn’t you?!” His hand went for his pocket.

Sans raised a hand in the same instant and Bailey was knocked off his feet by a blast of blue magic. His cell phone went flying out of his pocket and skittered on the pavement. He rolled over and grabbed for it, but it was already flying through the air and into Sans’s open palm.

“Fucking animal,” Bailey spit, getting to his feet. “Why are you doing this to me? _I didn’t do anything to you!”_

“maybe,” Sans said thoughtfully. “or maybe you’re livin’ a double life? carny by day, terrorist scum by night? wonder if this’ll provide any insight?” He waved the phone.

“You won’t get away with this,” Bailey snarled, advancing on Sans. “You can’t just jump people in the street. You don’t live in a fucking cave anymore!”

“oh, low blow,” said Sans. “get it? low? because we lived under-?” Bailey swung at Sans, so slow he may as well have been moving underwater. Sans sidestepped and the human stumbled, dumbfounded by Sans’s speed. “you’ll have ta do better ‘n that, _bailey_.”

Bailey’s earlier surprise was nothing in comparison to the portrait of disbelief and horror now. “How did- how do you know my-” He looked suddenly like a caged rat. He turned and bolted, abandoning his phone and his moped, only to be dragged backward with gravity magic. He squealed as he flew through the air. His back collided with the side of a building and his fingers scrabbled on the wall for purchase.

“i ain’t gonna hurt ya, kid,” Sans said. “not if you cooperate.”

“No! I…” Bailey twisted under his restraints, his chest heaving. “ _Dammit, no!”_

The only warning Sans got was a crisp crackle of magic in the air, and then Bailey had his palms flat against the wall behind him and yellow streaks of light ran from his hands into the brickwork. Next thing, two stories of brick wall were coming down on top of them.

Sans sent the debris- broken brick, mortar and plaster- flying in all directions before it could hit him. When his line of sight was cleared, Bailey had fled but Sans could hear his rapid footfalls pattering down a corridor inside the building he had just partially demolished. Sans followed him through the massive hole in the wall. Bailey was screaming, “Help! Help! I’m being attacked!” This appeared to be an empty office building. _Too bad for Bailey._

Sans teleported to the end of the hall and spotted the human sprinting toward a stairwell. He hadn’t thrown off the backpack, even though it appeared to be slowing him down. Sans thrust out his hand but as soon as Bailey felt the pull on his body, he dislodged a chunk of the wall next to him so that it came between him and Sans. Sans was forced to drop the gravity pull and Bailey got a little farther down the hallway. Sans teleported in Bailey’s path and the human skidded to a halt with a yelp, falling briefly on his hands and knees in his haste to turn around.

“give it up, kid,” Sans said. “i can do this all night.”

But Bailey was already sprinting in the other direction.

“jeez, kid, i don’t _want_ ta do this all night...” Bailey was persistent in wiggling out of Sans’s gravity magic. He kept dislodging light fixtures and bits of building and hurling them behind him, where they got caught up in the gravitational pull and flew towards Sans. Sans changed the direction of the pull so that Bailey’s body was pinned to the ceiling but Bailey quickly busted a hole through to the second story, where he passed out of Sans’s line of vision and the gravity magic released. Sans teleported to the second level only to find his eye sockets and mouth filled with dust, which was _thoroughly_ unpleasant, although he knew it was just pulverized plaster. The human had used his magic to crush the chunks of ceiling and kick it up into a thick dust cloud. By the time Sans had cleared the air enough to see, one of the windows had been clawed open and the human was gone.

_Fuck._

Sans teleported back to the car where Calliope was waiting for him. Bailey still had the other token. They could still find him. But in the following hours, the token led them in a big fucking circle around the city. Their target was moving, and he couldn’t be on foot anymore or they would’ve caught up by now. The sun set and it started to rain, a drizzle at first and then a deluge. As the clock crept closer to midnight (and to July 21st), Sans was about ready to give up, find Papyrus and stick to him like glue. Papyrus was the only one he really needed, the only one he couldn’t lose. If he could protect no one else, he would protect Papyrus.

Just before midnight, the token finally settled on a location. It had zeroed in on an abandoned warehouse. Sans figured he would give this one more shot. Parked in front of the rusted-out gate, he sighed, opened his phone, and texted Papyrus.

- _sorry i took the car, bro. b home in a few_

The windows and doors of the warehouse were boarded up. Sans blasted the main entrance with gravity magic, sending a _condemned_ sign clattering on the concrete floor. Sans and Calliope lingered in the doorway, greeted by a dark, musty room and complete silence but for the steady patter of rain. Sans raised a ball of light in his hand and pressed forward. The ghostly blue light had a small radius, enough to walk by without tripping. They passed through a couple rooms and down a hallway, Sans still following the direction of the tracker token.

“Uh, Sans?” Calliope whispered, although no one lurking in the shadows would be able to hear her. “I know how you feel about the subject, but now would be the ideal time-“

“don’t start.”

“- _to summon me_. Before you die, I mean.”

Sans sighed. “gimme a little more credit, kid.”

“I’m just saying. This was fun… until it wasn’t. You don’t know what you’re walking into, and I can’t help you if I’m-“

Two figures stepped out from around the corner in front of them. Sans dropped the token. Calliope gasped. One of the figures- the shorter of the two- shrieked.

“Alphys! Alphys, it’s ok. It’s just the little bone-headed twerp.”

“Oh! Oh. M-my gosh. S-sorry.” Alphys bent over with her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. “Sorry, I j-just need a minute…” Undyne gave Alphys’s shoulder a comforting squeeze and directed a piercing glare at Sans.

“what’re you guys doin’ here?” Sans said, nonplussed.

“What do you _think_ we’re doing here?” Undyne hissed. “Lookin’ for _you,_ jackass!”

“but how did you-?”

“Find you? Ha! I finally thought to ask Alphys-” Alphys gave a little wave from her bent-over position. “-and she tracked your cell phone here.”

“Easier to t-triangulate after you s-sent that text.”

“So yeah, anyway, I don’t know what the fuck you thought you were doing,” Undyne growled, snatching the tracker token off the ground. “but we’re going home. It’s bad enough you’ve worried the spit outta Papyrus-“

Undyne stopped short as the token was ripped out of her grasp by gravity magic. “not yet.”

“ _Sans,”_ Undyne said dangerously.

“just listen. i figured out how ta use this thing- it led me right to one of the mages.”

“Really?” Alphys interjected. “H-how?”

“eh, gerson said somethin’ about a magical connection to this thing an’ i figured it out from there.”

“Where’s this mage now?” Undyne asked with a raised eyebrow.

“he got away. but i got his phone,” Sans said quickly, handing the phone over to Undyne like a peace offering.

She frowned at it. “Such a little klepto…” Despite her irritation, there was amusement in her voice. “You can’t be doin’ this Sans, seriously. You’re not fuckin’ _Batman._ This is _my job._ ”

“i know,” Sans said. “i-”

A crash echoed through the thin walls of the warehouse and everyone’s heads snapped up in the direction of the sound. Sans exchanged a look with Undyne and they both went running toward it, through a doorway into the main storage area of the warehouse- a hulking three-story room full of shelving and old rusted heavy machinery. There wasn’t a clear source for the crash, but Sans immediately spotted a round, flat object lying on the floor a few paces ahead, centered in an area that appeared to have been cleared of debris just to make a space for it. Sans flipped the tracker token in his hand and it hopped away from him, skidded across the floor, and hit the other token with a clack like the knocking together of billiard balls. They stayed connected, as if magnetically attracted.

Sans had a sinking, twisting feeling in his soul as he approached the tokens. The new token looked much the same as its twin, carved with the symbol of the eye. Sans picked it up via magic and flipped it over. The flip side was carved with the Delta Rune but there was something else over top of it, hastily drawn in black marker. An oval with four little stubs for legs, a triangle for a tail, a head with dotted eyes.

“It looks like…” Undyne murmured, her brow furrowed. Her face fell. _A turtle._ “I gotta… I-I have to, um. Check on… Could you take Alphys home, Sans?”

“i’m coming with you,” Sans said at once.

Alphys nodded. “Me too.”

“we don’t have time to argue,” Sans said, heading off Undyne’s protests.

A blur of motion, and next moment Undyne was on the road, speeding through the narrow city streets at break-neck speeds, Sans and Calliope close behind in Papyrus’s car. If Sans had only been to Gerson’s apartment before, they could have teleported. The drive seemed to take an eternity.

Undyne parked on the curb and tore up the stairs to the penthouse. Sans grabbed Alphys, who was struggling to catch up to Undyne on the stairs, and teleported her up, landing by landing.

“Gerson!” he heard Undyne shout from above. “Gers-”

He made it to the top landing. Alphys covered her mouth with both hands. The door to Gerson’s penthouse apartment was off its hinges. The floor was covered in dust.

Not plaster this time.

Or ash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a while to write because there were a lot of little details to figure out in terms of future plot developments. Feels good to get it out. Phew  
> Anyway. 
> 
> **Announcement**  
> I did go ahead and make a Discord server. It's just called Fivellion's Writing Server for now, but I can always change the name. I'm putting the permanent link in the end notes for all chapters. Feel free to drop in and see if anyone is online any time.  
> I will definitely be online on Friday from 6-8 PM EST because I'd like to use that time to try and figure out if anyone is up for doing some writing exercises or workshops and possibly having regular meetings, that sort of thing. If you're up for that, see if you can make it during that time, or let me know if you can't! Otherwise, it can be a chill hang out if you want to chat with other writers.


	6. If Lies Were Cats

_Too late._

Too fucking late, and Sans could only stand there as Undyne unraveled in front of him.

He barely registered that she was screaming, didn’t know what she was saying, if anything.

Gerson’s apartment was full of potted plants, books, and various tchotchkes. Antique furniture polished, decorative pillows fluffed. It was well-kept in its clutter. There had been some damage to an armchair and some figurines knocked off their shelves, but otherwise there didn’t appear to have been much of a struggle.

 _He was old. Not the soldier he used to be._ Sans felt sick. He fought to focus, struggling against the urge to completely disengage with his surroundings. Don’t look at the dust. Difficult, it was everywhere. But he found Alphys’s face and zeroed in on it.

She was at Undyne’s side, hands fluttering in the air like she was unsure what to do next, like she was afraid Undyne would shatter under her touch. Undyne was a tank of a monster; sure, proud and righteous. Steadfast as a mountain. Undone in moments by grief. She had run out of things to yell, had no where to go and no one to fight, and now she had crumpled in the doorway of Gerson’s apartment where she stared vacantly into the middle distance ahead of her.

Alphys looked at Sans helplessly. Sans pulled out his phone.

Asgore picked up on the first ring, sounding a little out of breath. “Sans! Thank the stars. Are you with Undyne?”

“… yeah. eh, listen-”

“Good, good. I need you, Alphys, and Undyne back at the Embassy. Actually- no. No. My home. Yes. At your convenience.” There was a pause. “But do hurry.”

Sans gripped his cellphone tighter. “what happened? where’s-?”

“Papyrus is with me, safe. Everyone is safe, for now, but I don’t feel especially comfortable discussing everything over the phone. Security, you understand.”

“ah, no.”

“I’m sorry?”

“everyone’s not safe. eh…” Why was he beating around the bush like a complete asshole? There was no softening this. There wasn’t a tactful way to put it. “gerson is dead.”

Somewhere behind him, Undyne wailed like she’d been stabbed.

In the end, Asgore came to collect them. He ushered the three of them into his big blue van, Sans in the passenger seat, Undyne and Alphys in the middle row. The van smelled of potting soil and fertilizer. Asgore had to guide Undyne into her seat with a firm grip on her upper arms. She was listless with shock. He retrieved a fluffy blanket from the back seat and wrapped it around Undyne’s shoulders, giving them a squeeze. After a moment or two, her hands came up to grasp the blanket, pulling it tight about her shoulders and idly running her fingers across the fabric, staring hard at the back of the driver’s seat, brow furrowed like she was trying to work out a difficult puzzle.

As Asgore pulled onto the street, Sans caught a glimpse of movement in the rearview mirror and whipped around, only to recognize the figure hunched in the back of the van. Calliope was sitting on a bag of mulch, staring out the rear window. As if sensing his stare, she turned and met his gaze, her face unreadable.

“His stuff…” Undyne said faintly, drawing everyone’s attention. “His stuff. His apartment! We can’t just leave-“

“I’ve assigned several guards to look after his apartment for tonight,” Asgore said soothingly. “I need you elsewhere, Undyne.”

Undyne slowly sank back into her blanket. Alphys, who had been quietly fretting at her side, finally seemed to settle on a decision. She laid a hand over Undyne’s. Undyne tensed for a brief moment and looked at Alphys, who was staring at her knees. Then she sagged against Alphys’s side, curling her long, sinewy body up at an awkward angle, her sharp cheek resting on Alphys’s plump shoulder. Alphys looked like she was concentrating very hard on keeping still.

Asgore’s apartment building was situated next to the river boardwalk, where food stands and street evangelists vied for tourists’ attention and little tour boats sailed back and forth between moorages. It was just past 2 AM and the boardwalk was deserted. Asgore led them up the stairs and paused before the door to his apartment.

“I feel I should warn you…” he said. “I already have a guest tonight, and he’s a little worse for wear. But he’s alright. Or he will be…”

Asgore opened the door, revealing a kitchen/sitting room, comfortably furnished and verdant with flowering houseplants. There were three people already here; Toriel in the kitchen, filling a stovetop kettle out of the sink, and Frisk sitting on the couch next to a ginger cat monster whom it took Sans a moment to recognize.

 _“Burgerpants?”_ Undyne spoke up for the first time since the start of the drive over. “What the fuck happened to you?”

The cat looked up. It was obvious why Asgore had felt the need to prepare them. There were several fresh wounds along the right side of Burgerpants’s body and his clothes were torn and dirty. At Undyne’s exclamation, he scowled and looked away, hugging his arms tighter around his torso.

Toriel frowned and looked ready to admonish Undyne for her language around Frisk, but Asgore took her by the elbow and led her onto the balcony, presumably to tell her about Gerson.

 _Burgerpants got attacked by some humans,_ Frisk signed.

“Motherfucker,” Undyne growled.

“UNDYNE, PLEASE,” came a voice from their right. “THE VULGARITY.” Papyrus appeared from behind the curtain that cordoned off Asgore’s bedroom.

“bro,” Sans sighed, his soul flooding with relief.

“BROTHER.” Papyrus sniffed loftily. “I AM HAPPY TO SEE YOUR TEXTING FINGERS ARE NOT BROKEN. Eh…” Papyrus looked down as Sans hugged him around his waist. He gave Sans an awkward pat. “I Am Still Miffed At You…”

“i know, bro. sorry about the car.”

“I AM NOT ANGRY ABOUT THE _CAR_!” A pause. “I AM A LITTLE ANGRY ABOUT THE CAR. BUT MOSTLY I AM ANGRY BECAUSE YOU _SCARED_ ME. I DIDN’T KNOW WHERE YOU WERE OR IF YOU WERE OK.”

“i know. sorry, bro.”

“DO NOT DO IT AGAIN.”

“k.”

“OK.” Papyrus leaned down and returned the hug.

“Papyrus, may I speak with you?” Asgore and Toriel had returned from the balcony.

“YES SIR.” Sans’s first instinct was to shield Papyrus from the news of Gerson’s death. His better sense reminded him that he couldn’t. With some hesitation, he let Papyrus disengage from the hug and follow Asgore out onto the balcony.

Toriel had crossed the room to Undyne and enfolded her in a tight, motherly embrace. Their soft conversation floated over to Sans.

“Let me make you some tea, my dear.”

“Ma’am, you don’t need to-“

“Hush.”

“… I don’t know if I can stomach it.”

“Try.”

In a few minutes, Sans, Alphys, Frisk, and Burgerpants were all seated in the sitting area with a cup of tea. Toriel had led Undyne into Asgore’s bedroom and insisted she have a lie-down. Calliope sat on the floor with her back against the arm of the couch, staring gloomily out a window. The rain had picked up outside. They could hear it pattering against the glass. Thunder rolled in the distance.

Frisk turned to Sans. _What’s wrong with Undyne?_

“… we’ll explain later, kid.”

Asgore and Papyrus returned and were immediately supplied with tea. Papyrus looked shocked and a little sick, but he accepted the tea gratefully. He shot Sans a regretful look. He was sorry for being angry with him. He hadn’t known what Sans had just gone through. Sans shook his head minutely. It was ok. Asgore collapsed in an armchair with a heavy sigh, rubbing a massive paw over his face.

Papyrus took a seat next to Burgerpants and began examining his wounds.

“How Are You Feeling?” Papyrus murmured.

“… better,” Burgerpants said, glancing between him and Asgore. “The queen healed me most of the way.”

“If you are feeling up to it,” Asgore began, “I think it may be time to tell us what happened in greater detail. I would have liked my captain of the guard to be here for the interview, but she is indisposed. However, if Alphys would be so kind as to record the audio from our conversation, Undyne will be free to play it back at a later date.”

He smiled at Alphys, who quickly produced her phone and set up the recording app. “Oh! Yes… u-um. R-ready when you are…”

Burgerpants swallowed thickly. “I dunno. I was getting off work, I guess?”

“At what time?” Asgore prompted.

“Midnight.”

Sans frowned. “the burger emporium is open til midnight?”

Burgerpants bristled. “The Burger Emporium doesn’t even exist anymore. They went outta business, like, a couple months after setting up above ground. Because, _duh_ , of course they did. Humans don’t eat _glitter._ ” Frisk was nodding their affirmation.

“where do ya work, then?”

Burgerpants indicated the label stitched into his ruined work shirt. _Mountain City Theatre._ “I’m an usher,” he grumbled.

“… guess we’ll hafta start callin’ ya popcornpants now, huh? heh… eh.”

Burgerpants didn’t laugh.

Asgore cleared his throat. “You were leaving work?”

“Yeah. And the theater’s downtown, so there are lots of, you know, back alleys and side streets. I take the bus home, so I’m waiting at the bus stop. And these two guys came up. I mean, I say guys, but who knows? Humans. And I took one look at them and just booked it.”

“ya just ran?” Sans said, cocking his skull to the side. “without them sayin’ anything or nothin?”

“They were wearing these… _masks_ ,” Burgerpants replied defensively. “Humans don’t, like, run around with their faces covered up for no reason. It was freaky, ok?”

Papyrus had finished examining Burgerpants. He laid a bony palm on the cat’s shoulder and said, “TAKE A DEEP BREATH.” Burgerpants complied. On the exhale, green magic started to spread out from Papyrus’s hand, over Burgerpants’s arm and up his neck, seeping into the gashes. 

Burgerpants sighed and breathed slow.

“Can you describe the masks?” Asgore asked.

“They were just, like… rectangular pieces of white cloth, with a symbol on them. They covered their whole faces.”

“Do you remember what the symbol looked like?”

“I remember it had an eye in the middle…”

Sans and Asgore exchanged a look. Sans showed Burgerpants the tracker token. “like this?”

The cat’s mouth dropped open. “Where’d you get that?”

“a present,” Sans said drily.

“You couldn’t even see their eyes?” Asgore asked.

“No,” Burgerpants said, staring at the token on the table. “But they could see me.”

“What happened next?”

Burgerpants looked up. “Look, I don’t really know what happened. It was really… fast. This thing hit me, it was like this wave of magic, like a gust of wind? But… sharp.”

“And that’s how you got cut?”

He nodded. “But I kept running. I ran down a side street- thought I could lose them- but it was a dead end. They cornered me. One of them- the taller one- came toward me, and…” Burgerpants’s eyes were distant. “I fought. I didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t know how to fight. They were using magic and saying something in some language- I don’t know, it wasn’t English. Which is weird, because they _spoke_ English, but not when they were using magic.”

“They spoke in English?” Asgore pressed. “When? What did they say?”

“Erm. The shorter one was laughing and making fun of the taller one- the one I was fighting- because they kept missing me. And I hit them, once. Tore their jacket. But I was losing.”

“You were brave,” said Asgore.

“I just wanted to get away.”

“How did you get away?”

“… their phone rang… the shorter one. Their phone rang and they answered it and they just said, ‘yes, sir’ and then they left.”

“they left,” Sans said skeptically. “just like that.”

Burgerpants shrugged uncomfortably, avoiding eye contact. “I don’t know why, they just did.”

“Thank you for telling me, my child. I know it must be difficult,” Asgore said kindly. “If you think of any more details, or you need support of any kind, my phoneline and my door are always open. Ah!” Asgore looked into his cup. “It seems I need a refill.” He made to stand.

“Wait,” Burgerpants said, his voice wavering. “Wait. They, um, left something behind. The one I was fighting- when I tore their coat, it fell out. Here.”

He pulled a small slip of paper from his pocket. Upon closer look, Sans recognized it. “that’s one o’ those bracelets for the, uh. well, here.” He pushed up his own sleeve to show them the paper bracelet around his wrist. It was stamped with the words _Ebott Fairground: 1 Admission_ and the date.

“You Went To The Fair Without Me?” Papyrus said, looking wounded.

“strictly for business purposes, paps. i tracked a mage there.”

“ _Indeed?”_ Asgore said.

“he works there, name’s bailey.”

“How did you manage that?”

“i’ll explain later.” Sans took the bracelet from Burgerpants. It was stamped with today’s date. More interesting still, there was writing on the reverse side: a sequence of symbols Sans was completely unfamiliar with.

He looked up at Burgerpants. “ya didn’t think to show us this sooner?”

Burgerpants shrugged stubbornly. “Just looks like scribbles to me.”

“this is _clearly_ a code.”

Burgerpants hunched in on himself, curling up on the couch. “Well, I- I- I don’t know-“

“He _did_ think to show us.” Asgore smiled at Burgerpants. “Even in what I can only assume is a much addled and exhausted state. Thank you, my child. I’ll arrange a ride home, or if you prefer, you may stay at the embassy for a while. You may feel safer there.”

“… yeah. Thanks. The embassy sounds better.”

“Very well.” Asgore got up and went to make another pot of tea.

There was an uncomfortable silence. Burgerpants caught Sans’s eye, then quickly looked away, pawing at his torn sleeve, his ears drawn back against his head. “eh, look kid, sorry i gave ya a hard time…” Sans said awkwardly. “those mages are bad news. you did good. ok?”

Burgerpants just sank deeper into the couch, his face turned away. Frisk patted his arm, then picked up the bracelet the mage had dropped in the scuffle. _Weird,_ they signed. _What does it mean?_

“don’t know, kid.”

Frisk’s eyes lit up. _A puzzle._

Sans glanced over to where Calliope was standing on at the other end of the coffee table. She met his gaze silently. “yeah. a puzzle.”

Calliope disappeared for the rest of the night, without explanation. She just wordlessly allowed Sans and Papyrus to drive back to their apartment without her. Sans was glad for the privacy when he was reading Papyrus a bedtime story and Papyrus broke down midway through and spent the next hour sobbing into Sans’s shoulder.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE… CAN’T BELIEVE…” He kept saying, through the tears and hiccups. “CAN’T BELIEVE HE’S... AND SANS! I’M S-SO SORRY I WASN’T THERE!”

Sans blinked in surprise. “what? no. paps, you couldn’ta-“

“SO SORRY,” Papyrus whimpered. “YOU MUST BE SO… AND UNDYNE! SANS… OH, STARS, UNDYNE.”

“tori’s takin’ care o’ her,” Sans said. “she’ll be ok.”

“What About You?”

“i… you know me, i…” Sans struggled to make eye contact. He was more _ashamed_ than anything else. Ashamed of how numb he felt. “i’ll be ok too.”

“Sans…”

“really.”

“Do You Need To Cry?”

“eh. no… n-not right now, i mean.”

Papyrus nodded kindly. “You Need Time To Process…”

“that’s it.”

Papyrus raised his arms, shakily, both offering a hug and asking for one. Sans gladly reciprocated, and the shame was like background noise in the face of Papyrus’s thrumming soul.

Sans finally dragged himself to bed around 5 AM and slept fitfully for only a few hours, despite his exhaustion. He kept coming out of sleep and trying stubbornly to fall back into it, laying there with his eyes closed and willing his mind blank. Eventually he gave up and began to haul himself out of bed. He had to check on Papyrus, anyway.

“It’s written in pigpen.”

Calliope was standing at the foot of his bed. Of course she was. Who knew how long she had been there? His own personal sleep paralysis demon. Sans slumped back onto his bed and sighed.

“The code. On the bracelet,” Calliope clarified.

Sans was silent for a moment. “…why’d ya disappear?”

Calliope shrugged. “Didn’t think you’d want me hanging around for a while.”

“you were right.”

“Naturally.”

Sans turned a clinical stare on Calliope. “tell me you didn’t know this would happen.”

Calliope didn’t flinch. “If I had been able to save Gerson, it would bring me one giant step closer to gaining your trust, and by extension, my freedom. I didn’t know. Sorry, by the way,” she added. 

“thought it wasn’t your fault.”

“Well. No. But-“

“so why apologize?”

“It’s just what people do?”

“don’t.”

“Ok.”

Sans brought up a hand up to scrub his face. “didn’t really know him all that well.”

“Kinda seemed like you did.” Sans had almost forgotten that Calliope had been there for that conversation outside Undyne’s apartment.

“he knew me well,” Sans explained. “the other way ‘round, not so much.”

Calliope hummed thoughtfully, moving to sit on Sans’s bed. Sans was briefly distracted by the way his mattress refused to bend under her weight. “So, he was kind of like everyone’s grandpa?” she asked.

“yeah… or dad. depending who you are.”

“And Undyne…?” Calliope said hesitantly. She was quick on the uptake.

“yeah. and undyne.”

“Oh.”

“he was…” Sans trailed off, staring at his dresser as he sorted out his feelings. Sometime in the night, his numbness had been replaced with a deep, burning rage that was quickly rising to the surface. His bones were hot. He was invigorated in a way he hadn’t been for a long time. He got out of bed, a little dizzy with the newfound energy. “what did you say about the code?”

“Ah… Oh! Yeah, ah, pigpen. It’s actually a really common code. Easy to use.”

“you can decipher it.” Sans pulled the bracelet from his pocket.

“Yes,” Calliope said, clearly relieved to be on a more familiar topic. “Definitely.”

“do it.”

“Right. I need to write down the key. Or, well…” She cocked her head at Sans. “ _You_ do. Because I can’t pick up a pen. Huh.”

Sans got up and rummaged around in his desk drawer until he found a pen and a crumpled piece of paper. “just describe it to me.” He sat cross-legged on his bed with the paper and a clipboard.

“Ok… Er. Draw two parallel lines. And then two lines crossing over them, perpendicular...”

“eh. like this?”

“Uh, bigger, like, um.” Calliope leaned over his shoulder to look at his work. “Like you’re going to play tik-tak-toe.”

“tik-tock-what-now?”

“Oh… just-”

Sans stiffened as Calliope reached over and grasped his writing hand loosely in her own. “what’re ya-“

“Don’t be a dork,” she said. “This is easier.”

Pressing her thumb and forefinger firmly against his own, she began to awkwardly guide his hand. Her thumb slipped and passed through the pen. She let out a noise of frustration, readjusted her hand to get a firmer grip, and shifted so that she was sitting on her knees behind him. Sans tried desperately to concentrate on what she was writing: a series of four small grids with letters and numbers in them that she must have memorized at some point, for whatever reason. He tried not to concentrate on how warm and small her hand was, how human it was; pliable skin, the blunt little fingernails, a pulse against the outside of his wrist. She had freckles.

The only real points of contact were their hands and her knee brushing the outside of his thigh, but this close he could feel the warmth that radiated off of her, all down his back. Humans were like walking furnaces. Warm-blooded. It was difficult to reconcile the evident physicality of her with the fact that she made no impact on the physical plane. He had already formulated a few hypotheses in his head. She was caught in-between dimensions, at least that was his best guess. She just needed a little re-alignment. The real question: why was he, Sans, the point of overlap? Her steady breath came in soft puffs against his neck. That was distracting, too.

She finished the key and started decoding. The cryptic runes turned out to be easily decipherable, if you were familiar with the key. But when she finished, the result was possibly even more mystifying than the original message.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're wondering if I know where I'm going with this, I do. It's just taking me a while. I so appreciate the comments and kudos!! Keeps me going :) The Fall semester is barreling toward me like a freight train. Writing is something I do for my sanity, though, so I'll make time. 
> 
> Also I started a Tumblr! I don't know how to use Tumblr. https://www.tumblr.com/blog/fivelion


	7. Our Long Bygone Burdens

dp3wnpfq7

“what are we supposed to do with this?”

“Um.”

“please tell me there’s another step.”

“Well. Uh.” Calliope cocked her head at the sequence of letters and numbers, trying to make sense of it. “Just. Hang on.”

“could you have done it wrong?” Sans said. “remembered the key wrong?”

“… no,” Calliope muttered. “I mean, I could have. But I didn’t.”

“then what is this?” Sans asked impatiently.

“Gimme a minute.”

Sans collapsed onto his bed and stared at the ceiling. He could hear Calliope pacing the length of his room.

There was a soft knock at the door. “Sans?”

“m’here, bro.”

“The, er…” He could practically hear Papyrus shifting his weight anxiously behind the door. “Alphys Just Called. The Funeral Is Tomorrow. I’m Bringing A Lasagne.”

“huh?” Sans sat up on the bed. “why?”

“Something I Heard Somewhere- Humans Offer Food To The Bereaved After A Death. I Thought It Sounded Nice. Don’t You Think?”

“… ya want any help?”

“No, No… It’s Already In The Oven. You Should Get Some Sleep. We Have To Get Up Early Tomorrow.” There was a long pause, like Papyrus was waiting for something. Sans wasn’t sure what. “… See You In The Morning.”

“’night, paps.”

Sans collapsed back onto the bed and listened to Papyrus’s retreating footsteps.

“I would’ve thought grievin’ grub was universal,” Calliope muttered. She was standing by the desk, examining the code again.

“grievin’ grub…” Sans repeated, staring at his ceiling again.

“Lasagna’s a good choice.”

“seems like humans have a lotta traditions surrounding death,” Sans said. “from what i’ve read.”

“And monsters don’t?”

He shrugged at the ceiling. “we don’t have a lotta death.”

The funeral was held on embassy grounds. The countryside was all sweet-smelling meadows and warm breezes. Off to the west the city was a jagged silhouette against the blue. In all other directions were open country, meandering road, sparse clusters of trees and houses, and the embassy, stately and well-groomed in the midst of Asgore’s flower beds.

Hundreds of monsters gathered there on the hillside and listened to Asgore’s eulogy. He talked about Gerson during the war; a young soldier. He talked about Gerson’s way with children, his knack for teaching, his graceful descent into old age. Bees and cicadas droned sleepily in the background. Assembled toward the front of the crowd were Undyne, Papyrus, Sans, Toriel, Frisk, and a number of high-ranking guards.

Solemnity didn’t come naturally to Undyne. It was an unsettling picture: Undyne, straight-backed and square-shouldered in formal guard uniform, her mouth a hard line, her eyes resigned but focused. At a few moments in Asgore’s speech, she tightened convulsively, as if stung. That was the really insidious thing with grief, Sans thought. It would ebb away enough to make you think you had a grip on it, that you could adjust to it, before spiking unexpectedly in vulnerable moments, reopening a wound you had imagined was healing over.

As Asgore’s eulogy drew to a close, he gave Undyne a searching look. Undyne shook her head minutely. Asgore tilted his head in acknowledgement and made a gesture for a guard to bring him the box of dust.

“Wait,” Undyne said, her voice gravelly. “Wait, actually, I- er…”

Asgore smiled at her kindly, laid a broad paw on her back, and leaned in, murmuring something. Undyne nodded. She and Asgore walked to the crest of the hill where Asgore had stood to give the eulogy. “I see the influence of Gerson’s friendship and tutelage in all aspects of monsterkind,” Asgore said, addressing the crowd again. “but perhaps nowhere so profoundly as in the guard: our protectors, the keepers of our peace. Here today to honor Gerson’s memory is Undyne, Captain of the Royal Guard, and a dear personal friend of Gerson’s.” Asgore shook Undyne’s hand firmly before retreating to stand next to Sans and Papyrus.

“I… yeah, I… honor…“ Undyne’s voice cracked and she cleared her throat forcefully. “Honor.” She gave a sharp laugh. “Not exactly an honorable death, is it? If there is such a thing.”

There was a long uncomfortable pause, some shuffling in the crowd.

“Maybe I don’t know what honor is, anymore,” Undyne said. “But I know what honor _isn’t._ That one ain’t so hard. Murdering an old man in his home? What is that? What do you call that?” More discontent in the crowd as Undyne addressed them directly. Monsters shifted their weight and looked at the ground. “No, really, that’s want I want you to ask yourselves. _Don’t look away!”_ This last was shouted as Undyne’s composure broke. Her voice rolled over the crowd, shattering the tranquil summer atmosphere so that the ensuing silence was absolute. When Undyne spoke next her voice was cold, trembling slightly, more out of rage than sorrow.

“How dare you look away? How dare we stand here like it were any other funeral? _He didn’t die of old age._ I always thought… I didn’t think of it much because I didn’t like to. But we all just assume that’s how we’ll go. We get old and we die. Or if you’re like me, you think you’ll die in battle. You think it’ll be glorious. We’re all full of shit.”

“Undyne,” Toriel, whose face had been growing more and more concerned since Undyne began speaking, finally intervened. She was gripping Frisk’s hand tightly. Undyne ignored her.

“If you look away from this,” Undyne growled, still addressing the crowd, “If you try to ignore it, you doom us all. Because we have enemies out there, _nowhere_ is safe, and this will happen again unless you’re _vigilant._ If you think you’re safe, you’re wrong. If you think you can trust humans, you’re _wrong._ It was that kind of thinking that-“

Undyne fumbled, her voice failing her. Toriel, Asgore, and Papyrus all looked on the verge of stepping in to comfort her. Sans found his voice. “she’s right,” he said. “we need ta change our habits; stick together, look out for each other more.”

The look Undyne shot Sans was hard and reproachful. She looked away before he could really scrutinize her. “It’s my job to protect all of you,” Undyne continued, “but I…” She took a deep breath. “I need help. I need you to watch out for yourselves. Watch out for each other. Contact the Guard if you see or hear _anything_ suspicious. Pair up. Do not go to an unpopulated space, or a human-populated space, alone. I’m imposing a curfew. 10 pm. No exceptions.” A murmuring broke out in the crowd, but quieted when Undyne spoke next.

“I will do anything,” she said raggedly, “anything to keep this from happening again. It never should have happened. We should have protected him, the way he- the way… We should have protected him. And we didn’t. So, fuck us. How’s that for a fuckin’ eulogy?”

Undyne turned sharply and marched down the hill toward the embassy. After a beat of silence, Asgore cleared his throat. “… ah, Gerson’s remains will now be returned to the earth. And his grave marked with an apple tree.”

Asgore knelt before a freshly-dug hole in the ground, opened the box, and carefully tipped its contents into the hole. Another guard approached carrying a sapling, its roots bound in a biodegradable mesh. They placed it delicately in the hole and Asgore set about filling it in with soil and fertilizer. The smell of damp earth drifted in the air.

After the tree was planted, everyone walked down to the embassy gardens. Papyrus wasn’t the only one who had thought of bringing food. Toriel had gone on a kind of manic baking spree. Her pies, cookies and pastries were laid out on long tables in the courtyard. Asgore had apparently experienced a similar form of hyperactivity. He had done a tremendous amount of work on the grounds. The courtyard was surrounded by neatly trimmed hedges, lush flowerbeds and new trellises with young vines just beginning to creep up them. Little stone paths led away from the courtyard and meandered through the garden to nooks and hideaways behind oak trees and fat butterfly bushes. 

The crowd thinned quickly as monsters thanked Asgore for the ceremony and left. Sans was surprised to see Mettaton talking to Alphys and Napstablook in a gazebo a little way off. Papyrus had gone looking for Undyne. Around noon, he emerged from the mansion with Undyne in tow and she made straight for the food tables.

“hey…”

Undyne’s head jerked up to look at Sans, her mouth full of butterscotch cinnamon pie. “Hey…”

“… why did the pie go to the dentist?”

Undyne just stared at him.

“’cause it needed a filling.”

Undyne chewed slowly, swallowed, and walked toward the other end of the table.

“Tough crowd,” said Calliope over Sans’s shoulder. “Weird. Funerals are usually such a blast.”

“yeah, i get it, bad timing,” Sans grumbled. “it’s a nervous habit.”

“You joke when you’re nervous? That’s funny. I laugh when I’m nervous.”

“huh.” Sans slipped his hands in his pockets and walked along the table, pretending to peruse the buffet.

“I guess you could say pulling people’s leg is a knee-jerk reaction for you.”

A bark of laughter burst from Sans’s mouth and he played it off as a cough.

“When’re we getting outta here, anyway?” Calliope sighed. “This funeral is dead.”

Sans picked up a piece of cake and picked at it glumly.

Calliope gasped. “Sans! Sans!”

“hm?”

“Um- so-“ She bounced on her heels, fighting a smile. “Asgore’s eulogy really was touching. Even the cake is in tiers! Hahaha! _Ow!”_

Sans elbowed Calliope in the side to shut her up before she had him giggling to himself at a funeral like a complete psycho. He walked a little farther until he was across the table from Undyne again. She was scooping a massive helping of lasagna onto her plate with thinly veiled trepidation. Some nagging voice in Sans’s soul told him he couldn’t leave without having a real conversation with her. If she needed him to be serious, he could do that. Hopefully.

“so… i know yer gonna get some push-back about the curfew, but, eh. it’s a good idea.”

“Yeah,” Undyne replied curtly. “I know it is.”

They regarded each other over the buffet for a tense moment. “yeah. ‘m just sayin’. i support it.”

“What the fuck difference does that make?”

Sans was thrown for a moment. There had been an air of hostility around Undyne all day, but it had been hard to tell whether it was directed at him or not. Until now. “eh… guess it doesn’t?”

“If you want a say in public safety decisions, you can submit an application to the head of the royal guard.”

“so… to you.”

“Nice of ya ta remember.”

“look, i don’t…” Sans followed Undyne around the side of the table as she tried to walk away. “i’m not tryin’ ta… horn in on yer territory. i thought… isn’t it more important to keep everyone safe?”

She rounded on him. “What, you think this is about my fucken ego? Think I feel threatened by you?!”

Sans threw his hands up in frustration. “i don’t know, undyne! how am i supposed to know?”

“I _told_ you,” Undyne said, her voice gone quiet and trembly. “I told you to stay out of this, I told you to let me handle it. I told you, I _told_ you, Sans.”

“i- _what?_ we have information because of _me,_ because of _my_ lead-“

“You stole evidence out of my apartment and went running all over the city with it, picked a fight with a human, knocked a bunch of holes in some human office building-“

“that was technically the mage-“

“Thank the stars no one was around to _see_ it, but that’s not the worst part, not by a long fuckin’ shot, because when you went on your little joyride, I had to drop everything and track you down to make sure you didn’ get yerself dusted, when I _shoulda_ been _doing my job._ I’ll give ya a minute to let that sink into yer empty fuckin skull. Why dontcha think on that one, _Sherlock?_ ”

Sans just stared at her. The courtyard had gone quiet, every eye trained on the two of them.

Undyne approached with slow, menacing steps. “What else happened that night, Sans?”

The point of Undyne’s tirade finally clicked into place. “ya can’t be serious.”

Undyne nodded slowly, her eyes bright and focused.

“ya can’t blame me for-“ Sans gestured helplessly. “for this. that’s completely irrational.”

“Oh yeah? Can’t I?”

“you had nothing to go on, at least i was doing something! i found one of the mages. i made progress-“

“You made a fuckin’ mess.”

“maybe if ya’d just _listened to me in the first place-“_

Undyne went rigid. “What?”

Papyrus and Asgore, who had been watching this altercation the way onlookers watch a train wreck, finally moved to Sans’s and Undyne’s sides, respectively. Asgore’s giant fluffy paw was on Undyne’s arm, not gripping, but applying light pressure. Undyne seemed to have tunnel vision. She refused to break eye contact with Sans.

“He would still be alive?” Undyne snarled. “Is that what you were gonna say? Gerson would still be alive if I wasn’t such a fuck-up? I think we both know who the _fuck-up_ is here!” She tried to jerk away from Asgore, taking half a step toward Sans.

Sans’s magic flared for a second before there was a warm weight on his shoulder- Papyrus’s hand. Asgore shifted, using his mass to block Sans from Undyne’s field of view. He was murmuring softly to her. She was trembling from head to toe.

Papyrus tugged a little at Sans’s shoulder and they wordlessly turned and hurried to the car, Papyrus breaking into a jog as they reached the parking lot, dragging Sans by the sleeve and fishing his keys out of his pocket on the way. Once in the car, they both sat staring out the windshield for a moment. Sans’s skull was buzzing with unspent, agitated energy.

“Geohash,” Calliope said into the silence.

Sans shot her a confused glare.

She was sitting in the middle of the back seat, shaking her head and laughing a little. “Of course! It’s a geohash! I’m such an _idiot!”_

“It’s a kind of shorthand code for coordinates.”

They were back at the apartment, afternoon sunlight casting Sans’s room in buttery orange.

“these are coordinates?” Sans retrieved the slip of paper and their notes from earlier from his desk drawer.

Calliope bent over Sans’s desk, propping herself on her elbows. “Nine characters… They’re very _specific_ coordinates.”

“do ya know how to convert it?”

“We’ll need a calculator.”

“got it.” Sans opened the calculator app on his phone. “what next?”

“Right, so, it’s a function. You just need the key- which is the geohash alphabet- and the constant...” Calliope moved around behind Sans and grabbed his hand to guide the pen like before, and wrote down the alphabet with the corresponding numbers underneath. “0-9 are represented by themselves, so 3 and 7 are just 3 and 7. But the _letters_ correspond to a double-digit number, up to 32. dp3wnpfq7… There are 9 numbers… and d equals…” She traced the pen back to the key, circling d and the number beneath it. “12. So the function starts with 12 times the constant- that’s 32- raised to the eighth power. Plus… p is 21. 21 times 32 to the power of seven. Plus 3 times 32 to the power of six… plus…” As Calliope used Sans’s right hand to scribble down the formula, Sans punched out the calculations on his phone with his left.

The final product was a long string of numbers which Calliope instructed Sans to search in the internet browser on his phone. The first result was a map. Ebott City covered the southwestern quadrant and the valley adjacent to Mount Ebott was in the east. LaSalle River cut through the city, across farmland and countryside before disappearing off the northern edge of the map. There was a red marker in the center. Sans tapped on it and a side window opened with the coordinates he had searched along the top and underneath them, the words Kendall Hydro Dam.

“It’s not far from here,” Calliope mused.

Sans searched for ‘kendall hydro dam’ and opened the first article. The dam was a few miles outside city limits, built in the LaSalle upstream of the city to control flooding and upgraded later with hydropower turbines. But the upkeep became more expensive than it was worth. “it was abandoned in the 90s,” he said. “doesn’t operate anymore.”

Calliope raised her eyebrows. “Perfect hideout?”

Sans nodded slowly. “empty. lotsa room. remote.”

She flashed him a grin. “If only you were on better terms with the fuzz.”

Sans quickly wrote down ‘Kendall Hydro Dam’ under their calculations, underlining it twice. “grief does weird things to people,” he said, with more confidence than he felt. “undyne’ll come around.”

“And in the meantime?”

Sans stood over the desk for a moment, boney fingers drumming on the wood with nervous energy. “… sit on it, fer now.”

Calliope smirked. “Really.”

Sans shrugged. “no reason to rush in without the facts.”

“Didn’t stop you before.”

“there was time pressure before, n’ it’s not like i actually managed ta…” Sans trailed off, staring hard out a window. Undyne wasn’t all wrong, and she had shaken Sans more than he was willing to let on. “to tell ya the truth, ya met me at pretty weird time. ‘m normally not much of a go-getter.” He chuckled. “more of a nap-taker.”

Calliope tilted her head. “I can’t begin to describe my disappointment.”

“not what you were hopin’ for, i’m sure.” Sans stuffed the notes back into his messy desk drawer.

Calliope crossed her arms and shrugged. “Thought you were more of a renegade detective that plays by his own rules.”

“while private investigation would likely open up a wealth of opportunities fer punning-“

“-pun-pertunities, if you will,” interjected Calliope.

“i think you’ll find the word is op-pun-tunities,” Sans said firmly, earning a hearty laugh from Calliope. “it’s just not my style,” he said finally. 

“I’m not saying we rush in, dicks out,” Calliope said. Sans snorted. “I’m just- maybe scope the place out from a distance? Gather some intel? Another stakeout, but with snacks this time! C’mon, Sans…” Calliope lowered her voice conspiratorially, leaned in slightly and cocked her head at this perfect angle that had Sans’s face warming and his resolve crumbling. “There’s _skullduggery_ afoot!”

“well, shit…” Sans muttered. “when ya put it like that…”

Kendall Hydro Dam was a massive complex, with a large two-story building attached to the dam. The actual dam itself wasn’t much more than a big concrete wall crossing the river at a point where there was a shift in elevation, creating a change in water level upstream of the structure. The property surrounding the building was fenced in, and the road that passed close by was flanked by forest.

Sans and Calliope drove past the dam on this deserted backroad, Sans being careful not to slow down so much that they may draw attention. Night had fallen and there were no streetlights and no lights on in the building or on the property. A minute or so down the road, a narrow dirt path split off and led into the forest. Sans turned onto this road, drove a little way into the woods, then pulled off the shoulder, parked Papyrus’s car between some trees, and turned off the lights and the engine.

Outside the car, the woods were alive with the chirping of frogs and insects. Sans sucked in a breath through his teeth as he surveyed the car. “paps isn’t gonna be happy about the mud.”

“What’d you say to get him to loan you his car?” Calliope asked as they picked their way through the woods in the direction of the dam.

Sans shrugged. “needed ta clear my head.”

“That’s it?”

“yep. well, i said skull, not head. cause, you know-“

Calliope rolled her eyes. “Skeleton. Yeah.”

“i’ll take it to a carwash, i guess.”

“That’s, um. That’s…” Calliope wavered.

“what?”

“… that would be _clavi-cool_ of you.”

Sans’s stunned silence quickly gave way to laughter. “that wasn’t half-bad, kid! _patella_ the truth, i’m impressed.”

Calliope looked away with obvious embarrassment. “I feel a bit sick, actually.”

“lighten up, cal. no need to be so _sternum._ ”

“ _Pelvis_ is embarrassing…” Calliope offered a nervous smile. “For you, I mean. That you’re into this.”

“yer _verte-brakin’_ my heart, kid.”

“I um…” Calliope raked her fingers through her hair. Her body language, normally unflappable, was now screaming self-consciousness and it was remarkably charming because she was _still trying_ to engage with him despite her discomfort. “ _Ulna-_ ver live this down, huh?”

Sans’s grin grew impossibly wider. “not with me around.”

Sans stopped walking. He could see the road through the trees ahead and beyond that the dark, hulking outline of the dam against the night sky. He crept forward until he had a good view of the building, then settled down in the undergrowth. Calliope sat cross-legged by his side. They waited.

The half-moon drifted across the sky and made the surface of the river silver. Sans was unaccustomed to the nighttime noises of the forest, surprised at how _loud_ the surface was, even away from all the humans and their cars. But the more he sat with it, the more the noises blended into one harmonious background hum. A lone car drove past. An owl hooted somewhere in the forest and another, more distant hoot answered it.

“For the record, I think she was wrong,” Calliope said after a while.

Sans frowned at her quizzically.

“Fish Lady.”

“undyne.”

“Yeah. There was nothing… There was nothing either of you could do, Sans. They have the upper hand because you’re out in the open and they’re not. They know more about you than you know about them.”

“snakes in the grass…” Sans quoted Gerson under his breath, thinking back on that last conversation and realizing suddenly that it really was the last.

Calliope’s brow furrowed and she pursed her lips, like the phrase made her uncomfortable but she was unwilling or unable to say why.

“i’ve been thinking, it doesn’t make much sense,” Sans muttered. “you won the war. why go into hiding?”

“After the witch trials, there weren’t many mages left.”

“witch trials?”

“I mean, ‘trials’ is kind of a misnomer… You haven’t heard of witch hunts? Burning witches at the stake? That sort of thing?”

Sans’s frown deepened.

“A few hundred years after the war, the tension between mage guilds and the church just kind of… exploded. The church claimed that magic-users were servants of the devil but it was really just another power struggle, at the heart of it. I guess you could say it was a kind of domestic war in its own right. And the church won. The mages that escaped execution understandably stopped practicing magic in the open. To avoid, you know, death. Guilds went underground.”

“ya say ‘the church’ like it’s a person,” Sans said. He, like all monsters, was constantly mystified by the religious practices of humans. “aren’t there, like, a lot of them?”

“I’m mostly talking about the Catholic church, I guess. They had the biggest hold on Europe at the time. But religious leaders in general are supposed to be authorities on things like good and evil, and the afterlife and souls. Mages had a distinctly different philosophy when it came to souls in particular, and any competing philosophy challenged the authority of the church.

You’d be amazed how quickly we forget, Sans,” Calliope continued, eyes turned up to the stars peeking through the canopy overhead. “We live short lives, and the knowledge of previous generations gets muddled and mixed in with the folktales and before you know it, humanity has completely forgotten that monsters and magic were ever real.” She looked at Sans wonderingly. “And then you showed up. Just in time. Well, that’s not true. A little late, but… better now than never.”

Sans wasn’t sure what to say to this. Then his mood suddenly soured as his mind turned back to the curse. “… ya still think i’m gonna change my mind about freein’ you.”

Calliope’s smile dropped. “That- that’s not- I meant-“

“leave it, cal.” Sans kept his gaze trained on the dam. Calliope’s flirtation, her efforts to make him laugh, her brief moments of tenderness, all felt like nothing more than manipulation in light of what she needed from him. Sans was astonished he could let himself forget, even for a moment.

Their silence was uncomfortable after that, and the night stretched on uneventfully, with the rare vehicle passing by, and Sans began to wonder if he was a complete fool for coming out here. For following any advice at all from this apparition. For chasing ghosts that may only exist in his head.

Again.

The moon was low in the sky and the horizon was pink. Sans got up and trudged back to the car.

When they got back to the apartment, Sans was ready to make a beeline for his bed, but there was sticky note on his bedroom door.

SANS-

WENT WITH UNDYNE FOR TOP-SECRET VERY OFFICIAL NOT TO BE DISCUSSED ROYAL GUARD BUSINESS. LET US HAVE MOVIE NIGHT WHEN I RETURN.  
THERE IS LEFTOVER LASAGNA IN THE FRIDGE. UNDYNE TELLS ME IT IS UNFORGETTABLE AND I MUST AGREE- MY TALENT WITH NOODLES IS SIMPLY BOTTOMLESS! NYEH HEH HEH!!!!!  
NOW I MUST DEPART.

\- PAPYRUS

Sans stared at the note for a minute, went into his room and collapsed on the bed, feeling himself drift off immediately. Then he sat up. The beginnings of a very unpleasant thought were stirring in the back of his skull. Sans hopped off the bed and opened his desk drawer. He shuffled through it- random papers, pens, pencils, old batteries, fake vomit, palm-sized whoopee cushions, a rubber chicken… He pulled the whole drawer out and dumped its contents on the desktop, growing more and more frantic.

“You ok?” Calliope asked hesitantly.

Sans looked up, eye-lights shrunk to pinpricks. “the notes are gone.”

“The-?”

“the notes! the notes from-“ Sans’s expression hardened. “we have to go back to the dam.”

He grabbed Calliope’s wrist and ported back to the woods where they had sat through the night. The dam was less menacing in the daylight but still huge. Sans spotted Asgore’s blue van outside the building. Behind it was a flattened spot in the chain-link fence where Undyne had apparently driven straight through it.

“undyne,” Sans growled, marching across the street and through the hole in the fence. “she gets on _my_ case about property damage.”

“Pretty hypocritical,” Calliope smirked.

The van was empty.

Sans broke into a jog as he approached to the building.

“They can’t have been here long,” Calliope reasoned. “We must have just missed each other.”

The front door had been forced open, the handle and lock mechanism broken clean off the door and lying splintered a few feet past the threshold.

The first room was a sort of front office, clearly long-disused. Sans paused to listen, but could hear nothing but his own quickened breath. He charged deeper into the building, unnerved by the silence. There was a control room with a bunch of old machinery and a long window looking out over a large room housing what must be the generator and a number of output terminals. Sans was running out of places to look. Through the window, he could see a door that must lead into the interior of the dam. He ported down to the door and wrenched it open.

There was a noise emanating from beyond the door, echo-y and distorted. It could have been shouting. And then a bang.

“Ah, Sans-“ Calliope started, but Sans had thrown himself through the doorway. He intended to sprint down the dark hallway, but he abruptly stumbled and grabbed at the wall for support. He felt like a lead blanket had been draped over his body, like the gravity had been turned up, and his head swam with sudden weakness.

“Shit.” Calliope helped prop Sans up. He waved her off.

“m’ fine.” He continued down the hall as fast as he could without falling over, his head still swimming.

“No, no, no! Sans! Hold on-“ Calliope caught up to him and kept pace. “You can’t use your magic in here. Someone’s laid a suppressant field. It targets monster magic and drains you. You have to get out of here before someone finds you. Sans! Do you hear me?” She jogged ahead and stood in his way. “You can’t defend yourself!”

He shoved past her. There was more commotion somewhere ahead. Sans’s vision had gone watery, colors bleeding together. He barreled toward the sound until he smashed into an obstacle- a door. His fingers, numb and clumsy, scrabbled at the knob. It was locked.

“Sans! God, Sans, listen!” Calliope’s voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. She grabbed his shoulders and turned him to face her. He blinked a few times before her face came into focus, wild hair and sharp dark eyes and warm breath. “I can help you, Sans. I can fix everything. You know what you need to do.”

He shook her off, rammed a shoulder into the door, but he was so weak it was more like slumping against it. His magic refused to gather in his hands, scattered blue sparks fizzling at his fingertips. There was another crash. _“papyrus!_ ” he shouted, and even his voice was failing. He was falling. The floor was opening up like a gaping black mouth and that _nothingness,_ that Void was drawing closer, and this time he couldn’t run.

Then there was an answering shout from the other side of the door. “ _SANS! IS THAT YOU?”_

The sound pulled him back into himself. “yeah! yeah, bro, it’s me!”

“SANS, RUN!” Papyrus’s voice was frantic. “PLEASE!” There was more crashing and a muffled human voice.

Sans looked into Calliope’s face. “ya gotta promise me-“ he said quickly.

Her eyes filled with hope. “Yes! Anything!”

“don’t kill anyone.”

Her smile twitched and she hesitated. “A-anyone?”

“ _calliope._ ” Sans’s voice was hard and commanding. “ _promise me.”_

“Yes! Ok. Yes. I won’t. I promise.”

Sans wasted no more time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Led through the mist  
> by the milk-light of moon  
> all that was lost is revealed.  
> Our long bygone burdens  
> mere echoes of the spring  
> but where have we come  
> and where shall we end?  
> \- “Into the Unknown” by Patrick McHale, From the soundtrack of Over the Garden Wall
> 
> FANART YA'LL I'M SHOOK:  
> https://www.deviantart.com/crescentmoogle/art/Ghosted-855702904 by the amazing CrescentMoogle  
> (who also has an awesome Undertale fic here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13428879/chapters/30775431)

**Author's Note:**

> Drop by my writing server on Discord! https://discord.gg/TPxw6MJ
> 
> If you feel like commenting about anything, please do.


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